


Bones of Washed Up Gods

by everythingintransit



Category: Fall Out Boy, Mindless Self Indulgence, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: 1 character is very mentally ill and theres lots to do with psychosis and stuff, F/F, Lots of drug use, M/M, anyways im so proud of this fic pls enjoy, if youve taken lots of benadryl you will understand what i mean, mentions of suicide & self harm, theres sex going on for once, this is a demigod fic so lots of magic!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:25:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingintransit/pseuds/everythingintransit
Summary: - In which desert dust and cigarette smoke has turned this world boring and cold. Either you're running away from home in Arizona or fighting with your bandmates in Illinois or talking to spirits in New Jersey or trying to kill yourself in Georgia. You're a demigod no matter what, and at some point, you have to accept it and deal with what's happening. And the consequences of what may.





	1. What Happens in ___ Stays There

**Author's Note:**

> hola ladies welcome to my new fic! it isnt finished and im just posting it to hold myself accountable to keep writing it lol. pls enjoy!

JUNE

red mesa, arizona.

Ryan's had it up to here with the dust.

With the blank nothingness that surrounds him. He's living at the edge of nothing in the middle of nowhere. He's been running on empty since his god damned mom died and they shipped him to every state in a hundred mile radius to try to find a home that would "fit for him". His social worker's sick of him. The juvie in Flagstaff isn't keen on taking him back because he's broken probation so many times. He's probably headed to Santa Fe next. That's okay. Ryan doesn't care where he ends up anymore, as long as it's not Phoenix and it's not Tuscon, and really, Ryan's itching for a coastline.

Sick of all the snakes and not seeing flowers by the road and sick of never being able to smell rain. Ryan's fucking sick of it. The only thing Arizona is known for is the Grand Canyon and Ryan's never even been there so it isn't fair.

Ryan's thought about this for quite a while.

Last night he sat out on the back step of his house and watched dust settle in the dark orange night air while he considered what to do. This morning he woke up covered in sweat and went for a run. Ten miles. Made it home at noon and stuck his head in the freezer.

One day, he'll run away forever. Throw on the lightest clothes he has, lace up his running shoes, lock the door behind him for the last time and run away from that house and won't ever look back. The thing is, Ryan has a plan. One day soon, he's running away forever. Running away sounds particularly childish but the foster care system is a little fucked and if Ryan gets too much of anything in his blood then he'll be sent down to the correctional facility in San Ysidro which sits right down the highway from Albuquerque.

He can jump San Ysidro like that and hitch it down to ABQ in a hot minute, and taking a sixteen hour Amtrak out to L.A. is probably the easiest part of the entire trip. Ryan's got it all planned. One day, he's running away for good. One day soon.

armstrong, illinois.

All Frank wants to do is sit in Pete's basement and smoke. Not that Pete doesn't want to sit in his basement and smoke but he's got so much energy these days that playing sweaty tiny club gigs until his eyes fall right out of his head sounds like the best thing ever.

Frank gets so pale in the sunlight and looks more at home behind the glowing orange end of a cigarette that Pete doesn't want to insist that they go outside and do something, so he lets Pete fuck around on his guitar and write more lyrics while Kitty does her makeup for the hundredth time. So this is life.

Kitty lights a stick of incense and then pushes some more purple eyeshadow around on her eyelid while Pete watches and Frank hums while strumming his guitar.

"Guys-"

"We need a band name." Frank announces, cutting Pete off. Kitty nods at them in the mirror and does her mascara with her mouth open.

"We have a band name." Pete whines back.

"We can't keep changing our name at every show, and we are not calling ourselves the Graveyards! It's so gay!" Frank exclaims, and Kitty snorts as she moves on to her other eye. Not taking part in this conversation, Pete notes. Not helping to defend him. "And it's juvenile." Frank adds, sitting up straight.

"If I come up with a band name can we go to 7-11?" Pete asks, and Kitty pops a wobbly purple bubble of grape gum through her matte black lipstick while Frank nods sullenly. The incense is making Pete feel sick. He hates the way they terrorize his basement. "Yeah, alright, M.A.D." He offers after a while, looking at Frank with wide, expectant eyes. Frank looks back at him with those sharp, intelligent eyes that Pete's so jealous of.

"Like mutually assured destruction?" Kitty asks to the mirror.

"Yeah." Pete replies, and Frank nods slowly as he sits up straighter and lowers his dirty black Yamaha pacifica onto the ground.

"I like it. 'Tll look good on merch." Frank says, always thinking the right way, and he stands up and stretches so Pete can see the tattoos on his stomach. There's always something that Frank does to spite Pete. Seventeen and his dad won't sign off on a tattoo and Kitty's home done nose piercing got infected so Pete was left angsty while nineteen year old Frank tattoos his knuckles and wears metal through his lip and buys cigarettes at the store while Pete waits around outside like he's Frank's fucking kid or something.

Kitty isn't part of their feud. Kitty gets along with everyone. She wields more power than Frank does, though, because if she spoke up and said that she didn't want to go to 7-11 after all then Frank would sit his ass right back down on Pete's couch and they wouldn't set foot in 7-11. It's no surprise that when the three of them return to the bright hot sunshine of the world outside that Kitty says she'd rather just go to White Castle instead because of the fries. Pete doesn't complain. Kitty gets shotgun in Frank's shitty Nissan that looks like the Soviets built it while Pete sits in the back like their twelve year old son. Always and forever, the backseat bitch.

So this is life.

camden, new jersey.

Lindsey's walked all the way to Philly to buy herself a planchette and has just realized that it's Sunday and probably no one who sells planchettes will have stores open right now but it's Philadelphia and South Street is the perfect place to buy your ouija board supplies so Lindsey keeps walking, even though these creeper boots are really taking a toll on her feet.

It's June and humid and Philly is ridiculously walkable so Lindsey doesn't have an excuse to retire to the cool dark alleys of the SEPTA where she can waste her two dollars fifty on a faster and more expensive ride to the antique store. She gets distracted by the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop and orders something called a salty pimp that she licks endearingly as she continues on her way down South Street.

The massive glittering glass murals along the walls flash kaleidoscopes of cold color against Lindsey and her jet black ensemble. It's later in the day, maybe around six, but the sun still hasn't set and the air won't dehumidify itself until October.

Golden hour light frames Lindsey's pale face and the long black hair that sits heavy and unadorned over her slight shoulders. The antique shop is open, it always is, and she hears the windchimes over the door sing as she enters the store.

"Rhonda?" There's a pause of silence where Lindsey can hear things being moved around and glasses clinking while Rhonda and, presumably, her cats, find their way to the door. Lindsey's never been too far into the shop and has always joked that you'd need to mark your way or bring a compass if you ever wanted to find your way out.

Rhonda appears after awhile, pushing draped beads out of her way as she moves to the front of the shop. "Lindsey, always a pleasure" she greets, looking pleased. Rhonda is a short, hunched over black lady who gets Tuesday's senior discounts at Wegmans and wears a different color of neon lipstick to match her shoes every day. Today's shade is an electric purple.

"What's that lip called?" Lindsey asks pleasantly. She likes making conversation about Rhonda's lipstick, and doesn't want to hear the speech that is bound to take place when she asks to buy a planchette.

"'Raisin Hell'. You like?" Rhonda asks and smiles with those bright white teeth of hers.

"I love." Lindsey replies, and jumps nearly out of her skin when she sees one of Rhonda's terrifying naked hairless cats sitting way too close to her hand. They're horrifying, really, and Rhonda has this troop of them that hang around and make no noise when they move and make Lindsey reconsider her entire life. Thank god no one in Jersey owns cats like these.

"So what can I do for you today?" Rhonda asks, picking up the cat in question.

"I was actually looking for a planchette. And a ouija board if you've got one and would be willing to bless it." Lindsey never sounds unsure when she speaks so people will understand that she's serious and clear about what she's saying. Lindsey's confident in being alive, and she's confident in buying herself a damn planchette. Rhonda apparently doesn't feel the same, judging by the expression on her wrinkled face.

"I won't-"

"You will." Lindsey says, face hard. Rhonda holds up her hands in exasperation.

"You're in high school, supposed to be living your life! And now you're just talking to dead spirits? Come on, Lindsey. Where are your friends?" Lindsey's friends are probably sitting at their dinner tables disappointing their families. Lindsey's friends watch anime and change their genders day by day, they talk too loud and don't understand sarcasm or fashion or how often you should wash your hair. Lindsey's friends aren't really her friends. There's no real goth or emo or punk kids at her school so Lindsey has to settle for the Walmart version of the goths. Or maybe the gas station version.

"This is important." Is all Lindsey can say to defend herself. Rhonda pets her stupid hairless cat and tries to pass the time for a while but they both know that Rhonda's got a ouija board and a planchette somewhere back in the shop and business isn't exactly booming so Rhonda has all the time in the world.

"Fine." Rhonda says after she thinks for quite some time. She takes Lindsey seriously because Lindsey takes herself seriously, and she's come to terms with the magic that Lindsey claims she's capable of, the necromancy she's spoken about, and her uncanny ability to still be alive after living in Camden for the past few years. "I'll see what I've got." Rhonda's cats drift after her as she moves to the back of her shop, and Lindsey smells random bulky homemade candles as she waits.

Rhonda takes her time and Lindsey considers pocketing some of these candles; she's never been the biggest fan of capitalism anyways, but Rhonda's telltale arriving signs warn Lindsey of her return. She's got a huge black velvet bag that's suspiciously shaped like a rectangle that she lays out on her cluttered counter.

"Is that-?" Lindsey asks, and Rhonda nods.

"Now be respectful." She asps, like Lindsey hadn't been planning on it, and slides the board out of the bag. The board is smooth shiny oak with strong black letters, numbers, words, and symbols imprinted on it. Lindsey looks at it in silence as Rhonda places a hand on the glowy black planchette that's sat in the middle of the board.

"May the three enfold you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, hold you safe and hold you strong." Rhonda starts in her voice worn raspy from cigarettes and age. The burning incense is starting to make Lindsey feel sick.

"May the three encompass you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, encircle your life each day and night. May the three protect you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, guard your door and keep each gate." Rhonda takes a deep breath after this line and Lindsey watches her with wide eyes, assuming that the last line is coming up.

"May the three watch over you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, still your heart and calm all fear."

summerlin, nevada.

She moans out loud as Brendon pushes into her, her breasts warm against his chest. He bites a nipple and she squeals; pushes her back and a bottle of Lysol tumbles off the shelf as he pounds into her. She's loose, really, she was easy to get with and she'll be easy to get rid of. Her sweaty blonde hair tickles his nose as she kisses him hard, like she's trying to bite his lips off. Brendon tastes blood. He hates her stupid fucking blonde hair.

She's trying to make this last longer than it's going to and both of them hear the bell ring outside. Her tanned, soft stomach disappeared back under her thin and tight shirt. Jumps back into her skirt while Brendon's briefs are pulled back up around his waist and his fly is zipped up with his pants back up from around his knees and she shoots him a smile, just barely, with those flashing eyes of hers and then she's opened the door.

They've got a surprise waiting for them on the other side.

It's not that Brendon's surprised to see the vice principal and the dean of students standing with their arms crossed outside that closet but Allie pales to an unappealing shade behind her tacky blonde hair as Brendon casually stares down the teachers.

Mr. Zachary Robbins is not Brendon's best friend. He's pale, thin, gay, and wears lilac button down shirts that make his complexion even more ridiculously pale. Caleb King, dean of students, is old and fat and is definitely lacking a sense of humor. Allie adjusts her shirt which is obviously breaking the dress code for being too tight, but Brendon's a little more worried about the fact that they've just been caught fucking in the utility closet.

"Mr. Urie." Robbins says and provides a soul draining smile to Brendon, who returns it. "Ms. Hill." Allie doesn't smile at him. "I'd like to invite you two to my office." Brent catches Brendon's eye as they're marched across the basketball court to the main office. Brent raises his eyebrows but says nothing- leaves his friend for dead as he's carted off to hell.

In the office, Allie starts crying.

"I didn't want to! I told him I didn't want to!" She wails while Brendon looks at her with a look of exasperation on his face. "He forced me to do it all! He really did!" King is looking at Allie with concern, probably not knowing how to make her stop crying, while Robbins is staring closely at Brendon.

"Do you feel any remorse for assaulting her?!" He demands of Brendon, who throws his arms up in a shrug.

"I didn't do anything! We had- we, it was all consensual!" He pleads. He remembers the way her french manicured fingers had wound around his blue and orange striped tie and they had moved from the hallway into a closet and they had made out until she had starting groping him so her shirt came off and his dick came out and, honestly, Brendon had not raped her.

"He raped me!" Allie exclaims. So much for this lasting any longer than today.

atlanta, georgia

Patrick's killing himself.

You think that suicide would be dark and sad and late at night and miserable but Patrick's honestly having a pretty good time right now. He's sliced his wrists up pretty well, gone vertical and horizontal and he's wiped off the razor blade once he finished with it and the pills go down like water. Yummy.

He's sat himself on his bed, back pressed against the wall, comfortable. Like he's about to do something, pull out his computer and watch something on Netflix or whip out a book and start flipping through the pages but at the rate he's bleeding, Patrick doesn't have all that much energy to get up and live his life.

Because bleeding out stops the voices. When you're unconscious you don't see the spiders. Don't see the twisting, gaping holes in your faces or feel like something's choking your throat, you don't hear the voices, you don't see the people with their faces half rotted off, you don't smell their decomposed flesh. It doesn't happen when you're not there.

Patrick's well on his way to not being here anymore.

Things drift comfortably in and out and there's sounds, sometimes, noises, hands on his body as someone moves him, his arms are bleeding, he's downstairs, his head hurts, his arms are numb, his chest is exploding, he's coughing up blood, he's coughing up slugs and worms and dirt, he's in an ambulance but it's made of jello and he laughs through the blood and earth that's choking his throat and he dies. He dies.

At first, it's like sunlight. Like sitting in a car and looking out the window and having the fast movement and the branches of trees and the sunlight all mesh together to where it's bright and fast and you see green and red and nothing and everything.

But the sunlight disappears and the blue finally comes. Navy, oxford blue. It's calm and it swallows up everything and Patrick lets himself fall into it. Pretending he won't wake up. Pretend he won't-

Wake up in a hospital bed feeling small with butterfly bandages taped over his wrists and a polka dotted white and blue hospital gown leaving him cold and unhappy. Alive. God fucking damnit.

He sits in silence for a while. His throat is burning and dry and he can't manage any saliva to lick his lips. There's neat white bandages rolled around his forearms, stitches and butterfly clips laid out under them. Stomach and throat and chest hurt so much because they've probably pumped his stomach. Fucking dumb.

Patrick hits the nurse call button when he's done feeling sorry for himself. He's growing tired of hospital beds.

A nurse wanders in and Patrick sighs when he recognizes her. Goddamned Shaye.

"Hey, Patrick." She says in her thick southern accent. It makes it sound like they're in an episode of Spongebob and she's Sandy. He nods at her and she says she'll get him some water, and then disappears again. It's really no surprise that his dad isn't here. He's sick of driving out to the hospital from his office. Shaye comes back with a plastic cup full of potable water. Patrick's arm aches when he moves out to take it but he's gotten used to moving with bandages and stitches on his forearms. No big deal.

Shaye sits in a chair pulled up next to him, her eyes sympathetic. For a second, deep red blood wells up in her eye sockets and burns trails into her face, but they disappear and so does she. When Patrick blinks, she's back where she was before, and he takes a deep, shaky breath. He's all high on painkillers and doesn't know where his thoughts are.

Shaye doesn't know what to say either as they sit next to each other in silence. Patrick looks worse since the last time he's been in. Those eyes of his look more hollow; more scared. Even when they're sedated. He took more pills than before and the cuts go deeper. She wonders where he got the energy from. She's wondering how he's still alive. Patrick won't know that he flatlined last night and they had presumed him dead as everyone stood around in the panicked silence that comes in between shouts when no one has anything to say. He had been lying unconscious and, frankly, quite dead on the emergency room bed. He looked at peace there. And then his heart had started beating again.

"Whatcha thinkin about?" Shaye asks quietly. Patrick's been staring out the window with a lost look in his eyes.

"I'm sad." He says in a choked up voice. He turns those hazel green eyes back to her and his pupils are dilated and huge inside his glassy eyes. "I feel sad." He mumbles, drugged and dumb.

"Yeah." Shaye says as Patrick dissolves into tears. She's never ever seen him cry. The fourth, or fifth, time she's seen him in here and now he cries. Something has to be really wrong this time. She comforts him, tells him it'll be alright and that things'll finally be okay this time but neither of them believe her words and she can almost feel his pain.

Except they've never found out what's wrong.

He's stayed for psychiatric evaluations and kept the smoothest poker faces and just told them that he's sad, he's depressed, that's what it all comes down to in the end and today is different. Waking up at three in the afternoon, alone in a hospital bed is really what depression feels like and this poor, seventeen year old kid who just can't beat death is sitting in a hospital room without his dad, crying into his shaking hands.

It's not fair.


	2. Hallucinogenic Cemetery

JUNE

red mesa, arizona.

Ryan's the runningback on his high school's football team. Sports are something that comes easy to him, and he enjoys doing the suicide sprints and the step ladders and running laps around the track after school. Conditioning isn't everyone's favorite but Ryan likes basic athletics instead of actually playing the sport. Maybe sometimes he skips weight training days because he's not always up for feeling like a fool and a barbarian, but cardio workouts are all for him.

After warmups, they run through plays on the field for a while. Their football field is green and black with astroturf and every kid on the team is sweating their damn ass off. Dry desert heat is merciless. Ryan's busy drinking warm water when he hears someone calling his name like it's any of their business.

"Ryyaann!" Gavin has never been discreet in interrupting people while they're busy. When him and Ryan made a deal to pay for juul pods together he had walked right into Ryan's AP chem class in the middle of a lab just to get Ryan's money.

Gavin has a personality that changes like a damn weathervane. He'll walk around the school high and giggling, chilled to the point of bliss when he feels like it, and at other times he'll split your lip without a second thought. By and by, Gavin's fairly well respected around the school but is known for being the biggest stoner Arizona's ever seen and everyone's fairly surprised to see him marching down to the field.

He's almost made it past the gates onto the track before Ryan runs up and meets him. Gavin's pupils are blown and he's holding something wrapped in a napkin.

"Got'chur brownie." He mumbles.

"Yeah, thanks. Hold tight." Ryan instructs, and jogs back over to the benches. "I've gotta go, coach!" He calls loudly over at Coach Fuckface, who looks rather upset by this.

"There's still an hour left-"

"No can do, amigo! See you guys tomorrow!" Ryan calls out at the rest of the team, showing absolutely no regard for the one figure of authority who isn't feeling the best about him. He turns and jogs with his backpack over his shoulders and his massive gear bag slapping against his knees back to where Gavin is pacing by the fence. Ryan eats the pot brownie in front of the team, waves at them again, and then follows Gavin back up the track. They'll head to the dilapidated playground near Gavin's house and eat Twizzlers until Ryan has to go meet with his probation officer and they'll do a drug test and he'll have marijuana in his system, way too much of it, and then they'll send him down to juvie in San Ysidro and that'll be that.

Everything according to plan.

chicago, illinois.

Frank loves the energy. He stands onstage and shreds so hard on the guitar that his fingers bleed by the end of the show. Kitty slams the drums behind him, over and over and over with this kind of force that throws sweat and blood, like the kids in the pit. Throwing punches, shoves, kicks, chains smashing against each other, mohawks spiking over the crowd, silver piercings through lips or noses barely catching the light.

It's punk, it's rock, and when Frank screams into the microphone with his throat aching with not ever wanting to leave this stage. Some girl isn't prepared for this and she's trying to take videos while people keep shoving her onto the stage, and Frank watches out of the corner of his eye as Pete shoves his knees in her face as he slides down into a seated position as he pulls the strings on his bass, head banging along to Kitty's drums.

Their last song is crazy and kids go on and off of stage like it's nothing, surfing over the crowd, kicking each other in the fucking faces and crawling onto the stage only just to throw themselves back into the crowd because that's the way this goes. Frank doesn't command the crowd, doesn't control the stage, he's part of them and he keeps screaming, keeps willing his fingers to play the right chords, keeps tossing his sweaty hair back. He spits into the crowd and gets down on his knees with the mic as Pete jumps back up, headbanging with these snaps of his neck and a euphoric look on his face when he tilts his head back. Eyes closed and his black hair is a whirl. Frank screams into the mic, bent over on the floor, some kids trying to grab at his guitar. He's not playing it anymore, the bass is dying down, and then Kitty's drums die out. Frank screams the last words with the crowd and then falls backwards onto the stage, hearing them scream for more and knowing he's all out.

Fuck, he loves this.

Pete casually tosses his one pick that he never uses into the crowd and starts unplugging his pedals and bass from out of the amp. The show's over like that. The kids leave when Kitty tucks her drumsticks into her waistband and starts taking apart her drums. Frank sits back up with his hair smeared sweaty all over his face. His head hurts, but the can of some shitty beer, probably Bud judging by the syrupy warm taste that makes Frank want to puke, will water any pain he's feeling right now until tomorrow.

He sits with his legs dangling off the stage talking to some kids for a while until curfew hits, two a.m., and they clear out pretty fast. The basement is empty and sad with only a few people left inside.

"That was a rad show." Frank says to no one in particular, picking himself back off the stage. Pete nods. He's chewing tobacco, it's absolutely disgusting and Frank disagrees with it, but Pete's actually doing his job in taking apart their stage while Frank doesn't feel like doing much and Kitty's disappeared with her drums half taken down.

Frank drags an amp offstage with his guitar still slung around his shoulder. His van is waiting outside but he doesn't feel like driving. He wants to shave his head and fuck someone and climb up to the moon and bungee jump off the stars.

He can sense that something's wrong. He has to go talk to his dad.

Kitty steps up next to him and looks at the sky with those orange stars; murky from light pollution.

"'Sup?" She asks, not really meaning anything by it. Frank feels unsettled now, and shrugs his shoulders before moving back inside the building. He'll get the job done and then he'll deal with what's wrong. One thing at a time.

They pack up and get the amps, mic stand, dismantled drum kit, guitars, and plenty of cords back into Frank's van. He drives them through the suburbs of Chicago, drops them off at their respective houses, and then disappears off into the night. West. The Underworld. Detroit. Wherever the shadows take him.

camden, new jersey

"Come spirits in the air, talk to me if you dare. In a place where no life survives, in a place where evil thrives. Now I call to you, the board, now speak to us through this glass. Now for the living shall pass."

Lindsey takes a deep breath and feels her steady fingers over the planchette.

"Hello." She says quietly. "Is there anyone here with me tonight?" The planchette doesn't move under her fingers and Lindsey just waits. Something is bound to happen at some point.

But nothing does. Crickets chirp in the summer nights and the gravestones stay the same while Lindsey sits amongst the headstones and waits for something to happen; but nothing is. Come on, come on.

"Woo!" Something's come. Someone is wandering through the woods and yelling.

"Goodbye." Lindsey whispers quickly at the board and snatches her hands off the planchette like she's afraid it might burn her. The night is anything but silent and Lindsey sees this homeless guy fall out of the trees, flat onto his face while he's laughing hysterically. Surprisingly, he scrapes himself back onto his feet after spending only a short period of time on the ground, and he beams at Lindsey with the biggest smile she's seen on anyone's face.

"Hello!" The guy calls.

"Hi..." Lindsey replies, standing up. The dude climbs over the low cemetery gates and is seeming to have a depth perception issue because he trips again and then kneels in the grass, rubbing the blades vigorously.

"This is fantastic!" He yells, giggling, and then stands back up again. There's a mop of greasy black hair on his head, overlooking some pale skin and a face that looks kind of like Michael Jackson's around the time that he died. "Oh, wow!" He wanders over towards Lindsey, who takes an instinctive step back, since this guy is acting like he's on some sort of drug because this is not unaided human behavior. "Summoning spirits? Did you offer them anything?!" This guy is yelling everything, and jumps at his own words like he's surprising himself with the tone of it.

"Offer them something?" Lindsey asks, and the guy makes a face.

"You've gotta offer!" He sits his stuff down next to Lindsey's board and looks at her like he's expecting her to say her chant. Which she does, of course, she's going to talk to spirits with this drugged stranger and it'll be fine. He starts digging through one of his many bags and it doesn't take long for him to produce a sheet of paper that looks like it's a teletubby puzzle.

Oh god.

It's LSD blotters.

He tears one of the puzzle pieces that make up the purple teletubbies and hands it to Lindsey, who doesn't know what to do with it.

"I'm gonna pray, right? Yeah, let's pray. Put that on the board." Lindsey places the blotter on the ouija board with shaky hands. The guy moves closer to her, crosses his legs, and then says:

"O' Thanatos the great mighty god of death I embrace you, Thanatos, I welcome you, Thanatos, Oooo' Thanatos please accept our offering of this one blotter of lysergic acid diethylamide, Thanatos, accept our offering and speak to us!" With the way that he talks like he's preaching and the fact that they're sitting there offering LSD to the god of death, Lindsey's ready to call bullshit on all of this. Except the little square blotter has turned the same color as the ouija board. The dude looks pleased with himself and Lindsey's awfully quiet as she watches the square sink into the board. It disappears.

The guy puts his dirty hands on the planchette and Lindsey slaps them off as she shoots him a nasty look.

"I need to introduce us."

"Don't worry, it's okay." He says like he just knows this. He's arrogant and incredibly, just, he acts like how a man acts and Lindsey shouldn't be taking him seriously because he's literally tripping and not in his right mind, but she holds her breath when the planchette starts moving. Her fingers are barely resting on it and it moves with this force that seems to be coming from nowhere, like someone's pulling on it from a corner that's empty. LSD Guy doesn't have his hands on it either.

The planchette moves from letter to letter, using Lindsey's fingers as a vessel, and the LSD guy watches with a somewhat confused expression until he says:

"Are you writing this down?"

"What?" Lindsey asks. "My hand is-"

"Yeah, okay." The guy says and furrows his eyebrows while Lindsey feels like crying. There's a feeling like death in her chest. It's overwhelming and hard and it layers over her eyelids and crushes her, wraps around her heart and wraps the breath out of her throat. LSD guy is watching her with dilated, blurry eyes. He feels it too. They feel the heaviness together.

And when it's over, when all the letters have been touched by Lindsey's shaking fingers commanding the brave ship of the planchette, LSD guy's eyes go green. They roll back in his head and the whites are lime tinged and real, actual smoke or steam curls out of his mouth and he speaks:

"This world will be diluted." He rasps in an ancient and horrible voice. It doesn't belong to him. "Our spirits shall be wounded," he continues as Lindsey stares in horror, "We will be torn apart somehow. An innocent boy shall break a sacred vow."

summerlin, nevada

"Fuck, Brendon, fuck." Brendon sits with his head down as his mom smokes. She found the half smoked butt of a cigarette on the sidewalk and lit up because she's an addict and this is the way she works. Brendon's sitting on the curb with his backpack in between his knees and a downright miserable expression on his face. "You've ruined every fucking thing again, I hope you know that." His mom spits. She smokes the cigarette greedily, sucking on it until her cheeks hollow because she needs it that bad. It's sad. "Raping a girl? Really?"

"I didn't-"

"If they said you did then you fucking did. You are what they say you are." That hurts Brendon more than he'd ever like to let on. If his mom's an addict then it makes him an addict. If people say he's a poor kid, he's forever a poor kid. You can't change what they think. "My son... a rapist, imagine..."

"Mom-"

"I said shut up! Shut the fuck up and let me think!" She paces back and forth in front of him, smoking greedily, wolfing down the tobacco and puffing like a damn chimney. The glow of fire at the end of the cigarette doesn't hesitate for even a second. She must be out of oxygen by now.

She itches at her arms laced with track marks and Brendon can hear her shaking.

"God, I need a fix." She groans, taking an infinitely deep drag on the cigarette and blowing a jet of smoke out from between her lips. "Zackie's coming over today, I think, we'll fix your stupid fucking... situation" (at this, she gestures randomly in the air) "after I can think." Somehow, Brendon thinks that maybe this isn't the best idea.

They walk home through the dust and dirt of Summerlin to their shitty little apartment building filled with illegal immigrants and heroin addicts. Brendon fits in with the latter. Zackie's there like he's supposed to be, sitting on the couch, radiating aimlessness.

"Hey, Grace." He says with a wolfish grin and eyes that make Brendon's insides feel cold. "Brendon." Brendon nods vaguely at Zackie. He doesn't like to hate but oh god does he hate Zackie.

"Perfect kid here got kicked out of school for raping a girl." Grace whines, gesturing at Brendon, who's magically shrunk in that living room and doesn't seem his usual confident self. Zackie seems pleased with the news, though, and looks brightly at Brendon.

"There you go, Brennie! Finally grew some balls!" Brendon feels sick and disappears into his bedroom. He can hear their lighters flick and the satisfied noises that come with a high. If Brendon walked into the living room he would find them sitting on a couch, zoned so far out that it would be unimaginable to think about their hearts still beating. Staring at nothing until they come down and feel like nothing.

Brendon spends the night on his bed eating stale Pop-Tarts and feeling sort of depressed. He's got no homework to do, no one to fuck, and he doesn't want to fucking beat it while his mom and her dealer are just outside his thin door. There's nothing to do. So Brendon eats pop tarts and sleeps until time turns around and the next day comes along hot and dry.

Zackie's gone when Brendon drags himself to the bathroom to take a leak, and his mom is rolling spliffs on the kitchen counter. Just everyday things.

"Brendon, we're going downtown to enlist!" Grace calls from the kitchen. Brendon freezes as he opens the bathroom door.

"Enlist?" He asks, watching his mom light a spliff on the stovetop and take a satisfied drag of it. Grace Urie has natty brown hair, sunken in skin, and is so thin that she looks downright skeletal. There are scars and track marks and bruises along her arms and legs. She wears cheap clothes from the kids section of Wal-Mart and Brendon is completely ashamed of her.

"Army." She says through a cloud of smoke. "There's no other options." Apparently not. Brendon puts on his good shirt, the one he wore to the school concert where he got to sing a solo. The one his mom didn't show up to. And he stood in his blue and white button down shirt, sweaty under the stage lights, and smiled at the crowd and all the preppy kids' parents and knew that his mom wasn't there. Knew he wasn't anything worth being proud of.

The enlistment center is run down but Brendon walks in with his chin up. Maybe this won't be so bad. Maybe he'll be honorable for once. He's asked his mom to wait outside and she knows it's because he's embarrassed of her but she'll be happy to smoke on the sidewalk outside while her one and only son fixes his own problems.

And they tell him he's gotta be eighteen to enlist and he nods like he understands. But they eye his mom outside and asks "she your mom?" It's embarrassing to think that she's like a stray dog that he's tied outside and will bring home later just for a little bit of company.

It gets lonely.

Brendon turns his eyes on these men and then he talks, talks the way that always works. He couldn't talk the school into letting him stay and he fucked her, didn't rape her but fucked her, so he explains the situation and straightens his collared shirt and all of a sudden, they're pulling files and trying to find a full ride scholarship to somewhere or something. It doesn't take much convincing.

"Gateway Academy." One of the guys says, pulling out a pamphlet. He's got a mouse brown pornstache but his hair is ginger. The look of him makes Brendon feel decidedly ill. He was under the impression that those in the military weren't supposed to have facial hair. The other guy looks vaguely Native American and has all sorts of bracelets and necklaces on. So all the budget that goes to the military gets wasted on these rent-a-cops. Makes Brendon feel all safe and fuzzy.

"If you're doing well enough- they give lots of scholarships. Down in Henderson." Says hippie-admiral. Brendon nods at him and takes the pamphlet. He'll get into this military school no problem. Out of his mom's hair and alone. The world belonging to him.

atlanta, georgia

At some point, you just understand.

That she isn't coming back. That he doesn't love you. That the sun will filter through these blinds but it's not as though you'll ever really touch it. Understand it. That when you die you return to what you were before and sometimes all Patrick can see is painful red.

You just understand that something's wrong.

Some things were wrong, are wrong, and will be wrong.

Patrick is just one of those things.

Shaye tells him that they're taking him to a mental facility, and that's all fine and dandy. Death won't take Patrick anyways so he might as well hang out with some fucked up kids to pass the time. Really nothing better, right?

Patrick hasn't seen his dad in days and sits in the back of a car all stitched up and hollow. The painkillers have long worn off and the sky turns black as Patrick looks out the window. It's two in the afternoon.

The man in the front of the car is looking in his rearview mirror at Patrick but Patrick doesn't notice him. There's a strong, vibrating and winding sound going back and forth around his head. Shapes spiked like barbed wire flash bright red in front of his vision. Atlanta wavers behind Patrick's head in the rearview mirror. Kicking gas to get away from the real world.

Downtown always made him feel like he was on drugs. Requiem for a Dream type shit.

Cars would pass by in a blur, busses honking, the acrid smell of gasoline in the air. Daytime and nighttime never mattered because the sky was always dark. The buildings were taller than life, leading all the way up to heaven, and the bright lights flashed neon on and off and on and off until Patrick's heart beat electric. His pupils would shrink down to heroin size. His jaw would go slack. He wouldn't be in charge.

Patrick likes cities. He likes not being in charge.

The man driving their car is in charge and is talking about where they're going, ahousecalledHillsidethatisatreatmentcenter in a house and he'll get help there.

Patrick doesn't want help. He doesn't want to take control. He wants the barbed wire to keep tearing at his skin and he wants to keep seeing things so bright that his eyes change color.

He doesn't want any help. Never has. Never will.


	3. Riot Grrl Reefer

JUNE

san ysidro, new mexico.

Ryan's probation officer isn't happy.

Ryan is.

Things happened quickly after the marijuana had been found in his system and now he's sitting in a waiting room of some office in New Mexico with the taste of pot warm on his breath and the pit of hunger in his stomach. He's good, though. He won't be seriously hungry til tomorrow morning and he's high; it isn't exactly fun because he's been dragged across the state border and it's hot outside and he's in trouble but the main point is, Ryan's finally got his way.

His case manager shows up at some point and they start force feeding Ryan bread, which curbs the hunger (although he prefers Taco Bell), and he's wondering what the hell they're trying to do. He's got the munchies and yeah, he'll eat two loaves of wonder bread and listen to some riot grrrl music and then pass out. It's how being high works. Sometimes the food options are better. Music never is.

His case manager's name is something like Christian, but maybe it's Jewish, or fucking Hindu, and Ryan bursts out laughing when he thinks that this asshole has been named after a religion. They've moved him to a desk and they're completing paperwork on the other side of it. He hopes to god he'll wake up in juvie.

"I'm high." He informs Christian and the probation officer. What the fuck is his name? Rob. Rob and Christian. Jesus christ.

"Got it, Ryan." Christian says. "It's been established."

"I refused to sign any legal documents while I'm high." Christian is more chill than Rob and he chuckles a bit but Rob doesn't seem to be finding any of this funny.

"You're giving us a lot of damn trouble. We'll finish this tomorrow. You need to sleep this off." Rob snaps, slapping a folder full of folders probably about Ryan shut. He looks up at Rob through low lidded, red eyes. There's a calm smile on his face. Rob tells something to Christian but Ryan isn't listening to them. He's fascinated by the little circles on the wonder bread packaging. They're red, yellow, and blue, and they overlap and mix together. They're entrancing. Those colors are called something, Ryan knows, there's a name for red yellow and blue. What are they called?

"What-what are the yellow, blue, and red- what are they called?" He asks, picking up the packaging. Rob's disappeared somewhere and Christian is standing up like he's ready to go.

"Colors? Ryan, c'mon, we've gotta go."

"No, I know they're colors. Duh. I know that. What are the colors called?" Christian makes a face, he's frustrated, and Ryan briefly wonders where they're going. Christian checks his watch and Ryan almost screams- "Oh my gosh, Swatches! You know those watches? Swatch watches?"

"Primary colors." Christian mumbles, ignoring Ryan's watch dilemma.

"Yes!" Ryan shouts, and starts laughing again. He loves being high. It's such a happy feeling. So great. They're walking out of the building and Ryan's a little surprised to see that it's dark outside. Time flies when you're having fun. "Swatches." He mumbles to himself as Christian leads them to his beaten up sedan. "Suuu-watches! Sa-watches!" Giggling, Ryan drops into the passenger seat of Christian's car and bends over the dashboard while repeating "swatches" over and over in different voices. Christian drives with the radio playing old classic rock while Ryan watches the desert go by around them.

The night is dark and the dry land around them has faded to nothing. Civilization is barren out here. It's dry dry desert and dark dark nights. The constellations are clear as ever, but Ryan can't see them from where he's sitting. The tires of the car kick up faded orange brown dust as Christian drives them to a motel. Ryan doesn't ask why they're there. He doesn't care. He's coming down and he's exhausted.

Their motel room smells like chlorine and sweat, but Ryan doesn't mind. The floor is carpeted and stained, there's a television with a big crack across the screen, and the bedsheets are printed with some Native American tribal design. Ryan sits on the bed and ends up falling asleep on top of the covers. Christian doesn't get much sleep.

It's not long before the sun comes back up and it's time for them to be on the move again. Ryan wakes up disoriented and sees Christian looking more human than he's ever seen him before; sitting in a wrinkled t-shirt and yesterday's jeans half under the covers of his own bed, eating cornbread and wiping the crumbs off of the files that he's hunched over.

Ryan sits up and Christian looks over at him.

"Morning." Christian says.

"Morning." Ryan replies. There's a wet spot of drool on his pillow. He bites the inside of his cheek and cards a hand back through his hair.

"Ry, you're not going to juvie." The affectionate nickname is lost in Christian's words, and Ryan turns to him with quick and clean shock on his face.

"What?"

"I don't understand why you're trying this, Ryan, they're sending you to another home until you're eighteen. They think you deserve another chance."

"But I don't!" Ryan protests, sliding off of his neatly made bed. The room is ridiculously dingy and Ryan remembers none of getting there the previous night.

"Why are you fighting this?!" Christian demands. Voice breaks. He's so fed up with everything revolving around Ryan. And he doesn't understand why Ryan can't go to another home.

detroit, michigan.

"You changed your hair." Frank runs his hand back through the freshly shaved sides of his head.

"Yeah, my friend helped. Like it?" He asks, smiling haughtily.

"Yeah." His dad replies. The two smile at each other and Frank hugs his dad, feeling a familiar sort of warmth. Frank's lucky. Frank's dad cares about him and Frank's got a wild band that makes him feel pure, he drinks beer and throws punches and smokes to clear out his head and he feels like he's got everything in the right place.

Except for this feeling that something's wrong. Something ought to be wrong when your father is the god of darkness. "Which friend?" Erebus continues. He goes by Ethan to the mortals and hardly anyone ever comes out to the run down suburbs of a bankrupt city where Frank's dad had found the best real estate in the country. Mansions that are so cheap that even the flattest broke can afford them. It's dark and soulless up here too, and Frank always feels a little better when he's back up in Michigan. Chicago feels nice but sometimes the Illinois suburbs get old. He'll take home served with ice.

"Kitty." Erebus nods as they walk further into his house, and smiles brightly as his old hellhound Cheryl limped over to Frank with a crooked smile on her face.

"Cherrrrr! Hey Cher! How are you? How are you? You good?" Frank asks, and jumps up when a puppy comes scampering after Cheryl. "You got a new dog!?" He asks as his dad watches the baby hellhound jump onto Frank, attacking him with affection.

"Sure did. Calling him Paul." Erebus graces all his pets with names that are fit for middle aged white people. It's hilarious and genius and Frank is momentarily distracted with the baby hellhound named Paul that he gets to play with. He's reduced from an adult to a child just like that. "Come on in." Erebus says in a detached voice, like he hasn't noticed that his son is already sitting inside his house. Frank picks up Paul and holds him the way you'd old a baby that you're trying to burp while they walk into the kitchen.

"Where's Ashlyn?" Frank asks, putting Paul down on the kitchen counter and glancing up at his dad, who's acting oddly nervous. Ashlyn is Erebus's girlfriend. Frank likes her enough and is surprised that the huge dark mansion feels so empty. Even the hellhounds can't warm it up.

"Oh." Erebus says distractedly. "Bit of a situation." This surprises Frank. Erebus is friendly enough and he gets dark when he gets dark but when he poses at a mortal, he seems to be a normal guy. Works at a failing record store and probably wishes he was young enough to still wear eyeliner but he keeps his hair black and only gave up his battle jacket two years ago. And it was to a good cause, anyways. Frank got it.

Ashlyn wasn't any different. She's decidedly goth for an adult, keeps her hair black too, wears lacy black dresses and long gloves and big boots and she's a little bit sexy but Frank never ventures too far down that path of thought. Ashlyn and his father got on so well that Frank was even a little worried that they might marry and he would end up having to call Ashlyn "mom". No such luck, apparently.

"What happened?" Frank asks.

"We had a little fight, but it's fine. I'll call her tonight." There's a pause. Frank is scratching Paul between his ears and the puppy seems to be smiling with his eyes all squinted. "Frank, I need to talk to you." And this is what's been coming. "A lot of the trouble with Ashlyn is because I've been spending a lot of time... y'know, up... there." They don't say the name "Olympus" because someone "up there" will get curious and start eavesdropping. Frank rubs Paul between his ears and looks up at his dad.

"And what's going on?"

"There's some... problems." Frank doesn't need to ask what kinds of problems. "There's been a lot of problems between parents and kids, y'know, parents, and they, um. They want to make my world seperate. From ours. Like, they want it so I can't, um. See you. Anymore. Mortals and, well, us- we'll be split up."

"So where will I go?" Frank says quietly, cutting his dad off. "I'm half and half." Erebus looks regretful.

"You'll stay here." It sounds like just words, like it's just them being separated and people die and parents divorce but Erebus has always been there for Frank. When you learn to depend on someone, when you learn to love someone- it's hard to let them go. Blood is thicker. Frank can't let this go. Both of them know this, both of them realize, and it's all happened and come out so fast that all Frank can do is ask the questions that won't get any answers.

"And then I won't ever get to see you again? Who came up with this? What the fuck!" Paul looks worried when Frank raises his voice, and the empty house is even quieter for a minute where Erebus and Frank are thinking of what to say.

"You-" Erebus is promptly cut off by his son.

"I can fix this. I can." Strong and determined. Frank Iero, son of Erebus, he'll put everyone in their places and do it well. And do it right. "I'll go and fix everything. This is Kronos. I'll fucking tell him, I'll go off. I'll fix it. They don't get it." The house seems to darken when Frank mentions Kronos, and his burning hazel eyes meet with those of his father. "They're fucking idiots, dad. Don't worry about a thing."

camden, new jersey.

LSD guy sleeps on Lindsey's floor. His eyes go back to normal (she finds this out by peeling his closed eyelid open just to check), and she drags him home half awake in this weird state that makes her feel like she's taking a drunk friend home. They sneak into the quiet, dark house late at night and she dumps him unceremoniously on the floor while she crawls into bed and falls asleep with no alarm set.

Lindsey sleeps in and wakes up around ten o'clock to the hysteric birds putting on an opera concert outside. At first, she doesn't remember what had happened. Why there's a greasy guy sleeping on her floor, why she feels so drained, and why she's got letters written in green gel pen on her arm. She lies in bed reading her arm over and over until she checks the time on her phone and is pleasantly unsurprised to see that it's almost eleven in the morning. School is just going to have to miss her today.

She tiptoes over greasy guy on the floor, memories from last night lazily waking up and coming back into her head. Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, Lindsey recognizes the thick, long, black hair and the bright eyes but she feels weird. Not empty, not numb, nothing bad. Just nothing much at all.

When she walks back into the room, greasy guy is sat up. She still can't remember his name.

"'Sup?" He says, stretching. "You stepped on me."

"Sorry." Lindsey says. She's not. Her legs are toned but pale and she wears black athletic shorts and a big black tshirt to sleep in. Perched back on her bed, she looks at grease guy.

"Remind me of your name?" He asks, and this is this. Asking the stranger whose floor you're sleeping on what their name is.

"Lindsey."

"I'm Gerard. Mind if I ask where we are?" He's so, so out of it. Lindsey can't tell if he's joking or not.

"Camden." She says, crossing her legs over her dirty bedsheets. Her room smells like sweat and the blinds are drawn against the sunlight that's itching to come in. Lindsey's depressed during the day and usually asleep at night so her room has become an oasis for misery that still feels like home.

"Camden...?" He asks. Now he's got to be kidding. But those unfocused eyes and chapped lips aren't lying. He's lighthearted but confused.

"New Jersey." Lindsey confirms, wondering if she said "Jersey" by itself if he'd have thought that they'd have made it to England by now. Gerard smiles, though.

"Camden, Jersey, huh? Nice! I made good progress!" He says it like he's proud of himself and Lindsey leans back against the wall. Her feet ache from those damned creeper boots that have been tossed aimlessly into her bedroom. The bored and somewhat confused look on her face lead Gerard to keep talking. "I'm on a mission. Headed to Washington to kill the president." Lindsey nods like she isn't listening. "Swell plan, right?"

"Yeah, admirable." She replies. Gerard stands up and almost immediately sits back down. His eyes almost spin inside his head and he stares at Lindsey, who stares right back at him.

"Oh." He says, remembering.

"Yeah." Gerard puts his head in his hands. The sun shines outside, but neither of them can see it.

summerlin, nevada.

Brendon sweet talks the guys on the phone who speak on behalf of Gateway Academy, and they say they'd like to meet him for an interview. It's June, school is over in two weeks, and Brendon is being offered a period of summer school so he can finish off this year of school and start the next one with everyone else. Like a normal kid.

He packs a duffel bag with all of his belongings (not that it amounts to much) and cleans his room up all nice because he knows Zackie will move into it the second he leaves. The white walls and bright lights that spike his vision without windows flash at Brendon. The mattress stripped of its sheets, the worn cabinet picked up on the side of the road. It's home but Brendon doesn't need it for shit. He's never needed home.

He's got big plans and better, brighter places to be.

Zackie has too, apparently, and he's letting himself into the apartment.

"Hey Brennie!" He cajoles as she shuts the door behind him. There's an unlit cigarette in his mouth. His tanned, faintly tattooed arms are being shown off under a stained white tank top. He's greasy, track marked, and has a black eye.

"Zack." Brendon greets him, walking into the kitchen to see if there's any food lying around. There's massive bags of Cheeto puffs that everyone eats when they get the munchies but Brendon's sworn off weed and Cheetos because he's trying to be healthy because he's going to fucking military school so he leaves the kitchen to find Zack in the same place, sneering grossly at him.

"Gateway Academy, huh? Pretty pretentious." Zack remarks, and Brendon nods uselessly. He's not looking for a fight. Zack's always trying to pick one though, but falls back a little bit when Grace walks into the living room, half awake and confused.

"What's going on?" She asks. Brendon and Zack glare at each other.

"I'm leaving." Brendon snaps.

"That's right!" Cheers Zack, smacking Brendon on the back like he's trying to get him to stop choking. It's eight a.m. and all they want to do is get Brendon out of the house so they can shoot up in peace. It's not like they've got anything to hide, Brendon knows everything that goes on, but there's a sort of childlike innocence that his mom sees in him sometimes.

Not when he's snorting some drug he found god knows where, and not when he's getting kicked out of school- but sometimes, she sees it. Hardly ever, but sometimes.

Sometimes he's still a chubby cheeked third grader who keeps walking into the living room and asking why she's giving herself a shot. Is she sick? Can he have a shot too?

"Bye, Bren." She says in a rough voice. There's a brief, half hearted and awkward hug where Grace can feel her son not wanting to be there. Tensing away from her. When he had walked out of the recruitment center, his chin had been up and his head held high like he had something to be proud of. But the light in his eyes had died when he remember that he had left his chainsmoking mother outside.

She wants that light to come back. She'll let him go.

"See you." Her son says in his strong voice. Grace realizes that she's an embarrassment to him. She gives him a home and food but sometimes this home isn't safe and sometimes she misses things, forgets this and doesn't come to that. Doesn't pay her bills and Zackie has to come over so they can at least find some battery fans to cool the place down. Zackie does it for her so she doesn't have to. He's got the drugs, she's got the kid. Both are important. In this situation, one is winning out over the other.

"Do I get a hug?" Zack jokes, and Brendon fixes him with a dark, scathing look before shouldering his bag and walking out of the apartment. He pauses at the doorway before leaving. Looks back over his shoulder at his mom, standing small and hopeless in the apartment that he's known since forever.

"Love you." He says. Grace doesn't reply.

hampton, georgia.

It's almost an hour drive from Atlanta to where they're going but to Patrick, it takes days. He's asleep for twelve hours and then he's so hungry that he dies from starvation for a few more hours and he wakes back up feeling bright and perky. Bright and perky lasts until the rain quits and the sun comes out and then it's back to being starving. And then he's busy unwrapping the dressings on his wrists because they're so itchy and the man driving Patrick to wherever they're going looks awfully worried.

"Patrick, don't do that. Hey, Patrick." Patrick doesn't listen and unwraps the thin bandages from around his left wrist. His nails are digging into the freshly stitched cuts and black spiders with thin little legs are pushing out of his wrist. They're beautiful and intricate. Patrick watches as they crawl out of his skin with a look of faint fascination on his face. The spiders and blood mix together in a mix of wet, dark ink that dribbles down his wrist and onto the fabric of the seat beneath him. The man in the front of the car keeps saying his name and they've pulled over to the side of the road while Patrick's forearms turn black with spiders.

"PatrickpatrickpatrickpatrickpatrickPatrick we're here." Patrick blinks hard and the spiders disappear. The bandages are back around his wrists. There's no blood. The seat beneath him is clean.

They're sat parked on the side of the road. Next to the sidewalk, y'know. Next to some big suburban house that makes Patrick feel unhappy. The man in the front seat is examining Patrick in the rearview mirror. Patrick sighs and opens the door to the car. The suburbs are even hotter than the city and the sidewalk seems to warp and melt around Patrick's feet as he drags himself to the open door.

There's a woman standing on the porch with her hands on her hips and an unimpressed expression on her face. She's crazy tall even with flat soled flip flops on, with greasy brown hair tied into a bun that towers above her long face. There are dark circles under her dark brown eyes, and she makes Patrick feel very... uncomfortable.

"Savannah." She says in a voice dripping with a south Georgia accent. Patrick wonders if she was named after the city. She's extended her hand and Patrick shakes it weakly. She could probably kill him dead right there on the spot so he'll do what she wants. He guesses that this is who he's living with now.

"Come on in, Patrick." The way she says it is like "Paaetrick" and he can't help but smile to himself as he follows her through the doorway. There's nothing for him to bring inside and the man in the car has disappeared. Everything moves so fast or so slow and there's never an in between.

Patrick shuts the door gently behind him and when he turns around, Savannah's already introducing everyone sat in the room.

Greyson is completely androgynous and has fuzzy grey black hair shaved down to their scalp. Their eyes are dark brown behind wide rectangular glasses. Their expression is haughty and watches Patrick with distrust.

Nora wears a hijab and sits with her arms crossed alone in her own chair with a pouty expression. Patrick wonders how she ended up here.

Zoe has long, thick blonde hair that matches her thick black eyeliner and she looks awfully disappointed in Patrick's entire existence.

T.J. and Jordan are the other guys there, and both of them look hardcore and look like they'd rather be anywhere but there. T.J.'s got the shakes and Jordan sits with his fists clenched.

Patrick doesn't belong among them. They don't belong amongst each other- and they don't want to be there. The environment isn't set up for recovery. It's set up for isolation, and everyone's assuming eyes don't ever leave Patrick. Will they ever?


	4. Sparkly Dreams

JUNE

Ryan's new home is a dump in the sprawling suburbs of Albuquerque. The people who are fostering him for the time being are only doing so because they get paid for it. They're two junkies who tell him to call them Charlie and Skye. Their house has one bedroom, one bathroom, and a teeny tiny kitchen that someone staying in a shit hotel would be jealous of.

When Christian drops Ryan off at the newest version of hell; shiny and gleaming, Ryan suddenly gets this rush of sadness. Of homesickness, almost. Even though he's never had a home. There's bars on all the windows here. There's a screen door with a padlock on it. Ryan's never been one to turn tail but when he turns around to suddenly hug Christian, he knows that he won't be seeing him again.

"Ryan-" Christian starts, and Ryan steps back. It's dry hot outside and he blows a fringed bang of dark brown hair away from his eyes. He hasn't been able to gel his hair back for a while. Just something he left behind.

"I'll miss you." Ryan says in a strong, solid voice.

"I'll be back to check in..." Christian replies, but he understands it. Now is the point where he's supposed to tell Ryan that he shouldn't run away, shouldn't change things, but he gets Ryan. He always has. He understands what's going to happen. "Just be safe, okay?" He says in a rough voice.

"You know I won't." Ryan says with a grin. Christian smiles too, and the two shake hands before Ryan turns around to the open screen door to see one of the junkies standing there. Christian steps back off the porch and Ryan watches his car leave for the last time.

One of his hubcaps is missing. Ryan always noticed the silver hubcaps sitting amongst crusty grass and dust in the medians of roads, and he wonders if Christian's is sitting out there somewhere between the four states that the car moves between every so often. Ryan doesn't know which one he belongs to. New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah. He supposes that it doesn't matter now.

Things are new and fresh now. Charlie and Skye won't have to deal with him for very long.

Charlie and Skye disappear back into their bedroom as soon as they exchange names with Ryan, whose left in the living room that doubles as his bedroom with a little kid who looks around ten.

He's black and short and scrappy with a swollen blacked up eye. He sits on a shitty mattress in the living room that apparently doubles as their bedroom, and Ryan sits down on the floor.

"What's your name?" Ryan asks the kid.

"Hunter." He has a high pitched voice that's trying too hard to be tough and for some weird reason, Ryan's heart aches for him.

"I'm Ryan. Where'd you get that shiner?"

"What's a shiner?"

"That black eye."

"Weston gave it to me." Hunter says this like Weston had wrapped up a punch in a box with a bow on top and presented it to Hunter as a gift. Happy birthday, right?

"Why'd he do that?"

"Because I called him fat."

"Well, is he?"

"Yes!" Ryan shakes his head and scoffs.

"We have our priorities fucked up."

"The school told me that words hurt more than actions." Hunter recites, and him and Ryan make solid eye contact that's hidden behind sharp smiles.

chicago, illinois.

Kitty and Jessicka are going to a party. It's at Jimmy's dad's apartment and it's like a really low key and shitty Halloween party even though it's the middle of June. It doesn't matter anyways because Jessicka dresses like it's October all year round and Kitty never really gets hot, so it's no big deal.

Jessicka's dressed like a witch. Sparkly purple fishnets under a tight black dress that matches the one Kitty's got on. They both wear big black platform boots but Kitty's are built more for feet and Jessicka's only exist to look cool. Jessicka's makeup is hinted with purple while Kitty's is all black. One girl has a witch hat, the other has headband cat ears. Walking through a dark park at ten o'clock on a Friday night, they're a sight to see.

The reason that they're at the park instead of Jimmy's dad's apartment is because Kitty's plug is meeting them at the corner of Oak and 44th but, you know, in the park. There were some edgy 7th graders in Linkin Park hoodies hanging out on the swings but Kitty told them to bounce in her scary voice and they had scattered pretty quickly. Now, Kitty is fucking around on Jessicka's phone trying to text her plug before the party (hers is dead).

JESSICKA: is this aiden?

773-890-4673: wrong number sorry

JESSICKA: is this aiden?

773-890-4678: I think you have a wrong number.

JESSICKA: is this aiden?

773-890-4675: yeah whos this

JESSICKA: its kitty are u coming to the park or the party

773-890-4675: park ill be there in 15. i cant come to a house just hold on

So they hold on. In maybe twenty five minutes, Aiden walks over wearing a hoodie and basketball shorts. He hands a plastic baggie of pot to Kitty who counts out her cash for him while Jessicka stands there in awkward silence. Aiden counts the money, Kitty makes sure she's got all her pot, and the two nod at each other before Aiden walks off down the street. A minivan blasting rap is there to pick him up and he doesn't even have the door shut before the van speeds off, knocking over an election sign.

"Talk about awkward." Jessicka mumbles, and Kitty nods in agreement as she unceremoniously shoves the baggie into her cleavage. The two continue their walk down suburban streets and trip and giggle like they're drunk until they reach Jimmy's building. Kitty has no idea what number his apartment is, only that it's either on the third or fourth floor, and so the two of them ring every doorbell on the third floor until one opens with a wide eyed college kid that Jessicka recognizes as the dude she gave road head to two years ago after a Bulls game.

"Hey!" He says with a brimming smile. He obviously wants head again, be it in a car or not. Jessicka's forgotten his name, and she isn't going to remember it anytime soon.

"Hey." Kitty says, shoving her way past Jessicka into the apartment. There are a few people hanging out and playing acoustic guitar in the living room and it appears like nothing much at all is going on. Eric, aka Road Head Guy, seems to slink away from stormy Kitty Dunn and the spotlight is left to her and Jimmy.

Little Jimmy Urine is the punk faggot of their grade. He used to be the laughingstock of the school but learned how to spin the embarrassment from him onto everyone else. He sucks dick, eats pussy, snorts coke, smokes dope, and knows how to have one hell of a good time. Today his hair is in liberty spikes and dyed pink although the brown roots are showing through.

"My dad's home." Jimmy starts as a nonsequiteur. There are maybe five other people hanging out around Jimmy's dad's apartment: Simon, Ethan, Elm, Drew, and Becky. Hanging off of sofas or splayed on the floor; they're teenage boredom at its finest and Jessicka joins their ranks while Kitty and Jimmy share knowing looks.

It's not long before Jimmy, Kitty, and Drew are standing in the elevator with a middle aged man who's probably off to pick up his elementary school daughter from a friend's house.

Jimmy is wearing an oversized and tattered pink button down shirt that matches his hair and too small black briefs that you only see in the worst of moments. Essentially, he looks pantsless. He's greasy and smells bad and is holding a grinder and a box of pre rolled cones.

Drew is a computer nerd who also knows everything about anything and is wearing baggy jeans and a Rick and Morty t-shirt. He looks kind of like Phineas and acts like Ferb and is joining them because he knows the spots where the security cameras don't reach.

Middle Aged Man is trying not to talk to them anymore, after Kitty asked how his night was going he had clammed up pretty fast. They all get off in the lobby and the three teenagers half heartedly trail their unfriendly companion into the parking lot. He gets into his minivan and drives away while Jimmy, Drew, and Kitty sit themselves down in a quiet corner of the lot where Drew assures them that no one will find them.

Things feel nice and casual as they roll their joints and talk about whatever. Before too long, they meet Jessicka and Simon outside in the trees behind the tennis courts and smoke their blunts while Simon plays Jimmy's little sisters' ukulele. Drew has the flashlight on his phone on so they can see what they're trying to light up and the way that their smoke twists through the light makes Kitty feel really nice. She's living her life one day at a time and so far, it's been working well.

Jessicka throws up and their blunts quickly waste to nothing. They walk out back into the grainy, black parking lot. Simon has to go home and goes slow on his bike down the street. Jimmy doesn't mention that he's still got his little sisters' ukulele.

Back up in the apartment, Jimmy pours everyone half a cup of Brisk pink lemonade and two by two they go into his room where he pours them vodka. Kitty half finishes her drink and ends up trying to open a frozen GoGurt on the kitchen floor. Everything is perfectly calm and, well, perfect except for the phone call that's about to ensue.

camden, new jersey.

"Kitty?"

"Linds?" Kitty sounds predictably out of it, and Lindsey sighs with desperation as she curls herself around the phone.

"Are you high?" Lindsey whispers, and she hears very.... ambient sounds from the other end of the line. Like someone's playing the synths and the guitar, or something. But Kitty's voice has a calming feeling on her, and Lindsey just has to hear her nickname to calm herself back down.

"High, drunk, I'm all of it! Dead and alive, baby." Kitty slurs happily back over the phone. "I'm tryna open this Gogurt. It's, like, frozen. Do we freeze Gogurts these days?" Although Lindsey loves her girlfriend to death, this is one of those times where Lindsey really needs Kitty and Kitty is mentally unavailable.

"I need your help, babe." Lindsey murmurs, staring at the cracked door to her bedroom. Gerard, or LSD Guy, is in her shower and has been for quite a while and is either: A. Jacking off, B. Falling asleep, or C. Deep cleaning his hair. Lindsey suspects that he's somewhere in between options A and B.

"Whaz goin' on?" Kitty asks sloppily.

"I met a dude in the cemetery last night and his eyes turned green and he had smoke come out of his mouth and he was on LSD and I felt a ghost, or a demon, or something- and he recited something like a prophecy and-" Kitty bursts out laughing. This is really not what Lindsey needs to be hearing. When level headed, Kitty is mature and thinks through situations carefully. Tonight is obviously not her night.

"Here, talk to Drew." Lindsey can hear the sounds changing on the line and is then confronted by a deep, unfamiliar voice.

"Hey?" Says the voice.

"Hi?"

"Kitty, um, says you were...... possessed." Lindsey can hear her girlfriend chattering in the background.

"No, listen carefully, okay? I was hanging out in a cemetery with a ouija board, trying to connect to some spirits." She's interrupted by the low, offhand murmur of "that's so cool" before she continues on with her story. In enough detail that whoever Drew is can understand what happened, Lindsey recounts the horrible and hollow feeling in her chest and the blotters and the green eyes and the smoke and the prophecy. It's still written on her arm. Drew listens and "mhms" and definitely sounds much more sober than the rest of the laughing company in the background.

After her story is finished, Drew thinks.

"I think I have an idea about what happened to you guys." Drew muses. He drawls his words out slowly, like he's got all the time in the world, and it calms Lindsey down. She imagines a guy sitting back on a couch in a darkened room, Kitty's phone held to the side of his tilted head. The room is crawling with the drunk and the high, lying on the floor and sitting backwards on chairs and going crazy in their own heads and he sits in the middle of the completely internal chaos while advising her on what to do with her possessed situation.

"Drew?" Lindsey asks.

"Yeah. I think the Gods have been trying to speak to you."

"Uh-"

"No, no- let me explain. You say that your friend was praying to Morpheus?"

"Yeah."

"Morpheus is the god of dreams. I don't know why your friend would be praying to the god of dreams in a cemetery, but he was. Which means something. Morpheus is a minor god, and is most well known as being that dude in the Matrix, y'know?" Drew says, and Lindsey gets the vibe that he's a nerd.

"Yeah."

"Okay, well. If your LSD blotter disappeared into the ouija board then it's obvious that a god, Morpheus or not, was using spirits to accept your offer. Your friend knows about the gods if he knows what to offer them. It would make sense for Morpheus to take the LSD because tripping and dreams, right? Cool stuff?"

"Yeah."

"I think your friend may have some connection with the gods. You should come up here, y'know. I'd like to talk to him."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Good luck." Drew says, coughs, sneezes, and then hangs up. Lindsey sits on her bed cross legged and looks at her phone. She's startled by her door opening and somehow isn't surprised to see that Gerard has helped himself to her eyeliner. Now he looks like a dumb raccoon, and Lindsey is getting the feeling that getting along with this guy won't be as easy as it may look.

"Hey." Lindsey mumbles. Gerard just nods at her in greeting. "You okay with heading up to Chicago?" His face falls a little bit.

"I was on the way to D.C..." There's a whiney twinge to his voice, but he gets it. "You talked to someone?" He inquires.

"Yeah." Lindsey nods. "Yeah, I know someone who knows things."

las vegas, nevada.

Some girl on the bus to Henderson won't leave Brendon alone. When he stepped on the bus all handsome and off to war (school, whatever) she had immediately moved herself that much closer to him and now is on this spiel about how nothing matters in life except for love, passion, and sex. Admittedly, Brendon doesn't mind the attention. It's a warmer feeling than having Zackie's glassy, dangerous eyes staring him down. Brendon wraps his arm around the girl's shoulders as they hit the 515.

There's a big stop here and about twenty minutes before the bus will start moving again, and Brendon purses his lips nervously as the girl continues on about the last guy she slept with.

"Hey..." He mumbles to the girl who shuts up and looks up at him with her warm brown eyes. She's latina and has brightly done up lips, big hoop earrings, and snaps gum between those moving lips. She looks like a chonga fresh out of Miami. 

"Sammy." She supplies her name in a cocky, confident voice. Sammy is basically lying on top of Brendon, whose back is pressed against the window of the bus while this girl snaps her gum at him. But her long brown hair, well. He likes brown hair.

"Say we get outta here? Get some dope, get a hotel room?" He tilts his head and smiles warmly as Sammy giggles against his lips. She kisses hard. He kisses wet. He holds her angular face in both hands and kisses her right on the lips and she moves against him, crawling over him, and they're laughing while kissing and Brendon feels giddy. "On the strip, how'bout?"

"Of course!" Sammy squeals excitedly, running her hands through his close cropped hair. Brendon's bag swings behind him as he exits the bus into the bright desert air. Sammy hangs off of him like she's his, and Brendon smiles with this wild, free feeling in his chest.

They both have fake I.Ds, all the teenagers do who grow up within a 10 mile radius of Vegas, and they walk down the strip amongst the tourists and palm trees like they own the place. Brendon's got his sunglasses on and a girl on his arm and a plan forming in his mind, but he can wait to put it into use. He stole some of Zackie's money before he left. He's got more than enough to last a night in Paradise.

"Wow, I've always wanted to go there." Sammy says with a half smile that lets Brendon know just what she wants. Her sharp brown eyes are trained on the massive Luxor casino that Brendon used to draw pictures of as a kid. It's a massive black pyramid that casts shadows on the ground whether at midnight or noon.

"Let's go, huh?" Sammy smiles brightly and widely at Brendon. They cross the street with the masses of everyone else who's drunk or fat or in the middle of committing some activity that they shouldn't be doing. All American. Brendon loves Vegas in the summer. It only feels like home on the strip when he can disappear amongst all the people who don't know where they are. The lights get so bright that everything's so dark when he goes back home. But he's done with home now.

He and Sammy hang out playing slots for a while. They get bored and walk around the casino and he buys her a sparkly necklace that costs more than he would ever make grilling burgers at the deli down the street from his house. The necklace flashes on her thin chest as she drinks champagne in a fancy restaurant where they eat what they order and hang around for too long afterwards. Time doesn't exist in casinos and they're back at the bright, jingling, slots before too long. Win some, lose some, and the two of them play roulette for a while and drink too much and Brendon gets them a room.

They make out in the elevator and smile and laugh and Sammy keeps her necklace on when they fumble their way into the single bedded room and crash hard on the bed, all tangled with each other.

"God, you're so hot." Sammy pants as she straddles Brendon on the bed. He's hard and lets her undo his pants as he feels that warm feeling in his veins. Maybe it's the booze or the hormones but, man, Brendon feels good and feels even better with Sammy sucking his cock. He fucks her afterwards and she's hot and tight and sort of flat chested and Brendon's okay with that. They make out rough in bed afterwards until Brendon's lip bleeds.

Round two takes place in the shower and it's two a.m. when the two of them are back in their clothes, looking fresher and sharper than ever. Ready for a night on the town.

"I love you." Sammy says to Brendon, loud and clear right before they leave. She's wearing what she came here in: a simple tight red dress. Her eyes glow with passion. Brendon's hair is damp and slicked back. They're like Sid and Nancy; glamorous and together and ready for more. Brendon and Sammy do lines until their noses bleed. They kiss and taste blood.

hampton, georgia.

Patrick is woken up promptly at 7:00 in the morning by Savannah. At 7:30, they're all due downstairs for breakfast. Patrick has been roomed with Greyson who is full of doom and hatred. Patrick had "gone to sleep" the previous night as soon as lights out was announced and had hallucinated spiders in the walls all night while Greyson had snuck out under the impression that their roommate was asleep. Patrick's no snitch, but he's also under the impression that they shouldn't be sneaking out.

It doesn't matter anyways because with the way Greyson stares daggers at Patrick, he has nothing to worry about. Savannah stops by with meds and then tells Patrick that they have to change the bandages on his wrists. Greyson sneers at him and Patrick can't help but wonder what put them in there.

Patrick's appetite is ruined by seeing the swollen stitches on his arms when they rewrap the bandages holding his wrists back together but he's forced to eat breakfast at the table with the rest of them.

It's then that you understand what's going on.

Nora has an eating disorder and Zoe's diabetic and depressed and T.J. is detoxing from god knows what. These things are obvious. Those in charge closely hover around Nora and make her even more uncomfortable and Zoe checks her blood sugar and relays the number to Savannah and counts her carbs and T.J. is shaking, pale, and sweaty and keeps mentioning that he feels nauseous.

This is the crowd that Patrick's landed with. Admittedly, he fits in quite well with the ragtag group of outcasts but he feels awful enough to be alive in the first place, rather than being alive here and now.

It's too easy for him to take part in what they want him to, so he doesn't. Chores time and goals time and this time and that time are reminiscent of summer camp in early middle school, back when Patrick would fiddle with his neon drawstring bag and adjust his glasses constantly and never make eye contact with anyone. Mouth shut, chin down.

And how later in middle school as an angsty eighth grader with pre pubescent acne and a tendency to burn his fingertips with BICs, he had been held after school with the younger kids until his dad got off of work to pick him up from school. No one ever asked why Patrick preferred his fingertips scabbed.

He still does.

Sometimes he still burns them. Sometimes it's just easier to take a razor blade sideways and slice the skin until it's gridded and zigzagged. Everyone here has intact fingertips. When Patrick looks down at his hands, they look far, far away. He feels as though his eyes are sitting on his forehead and he's seeing everything from too high up.

The schedule is monotonous.

They do morning goals group and then they do "academics" and then they do lunch and then group therapy and then more "academics" and then dinner and then chores and then free time and then therapy and activities and then meds and then lights out.

The next morning is saying "all over again." Patrick's head is telling him that Jordan with the anger issues is going to kill him. So Patrick tosses and turns in bed, sweating and shaking with the obsessive feeling of hands around his neck, throttling and choking him until his chest feels so hot and out of control that he gasps ruthlessly until Greyson tells him to shut the fuck up.

So he cries silently and sullenly into his pillows, filled with a phantom, fearful pain until Jordan disappears back into the shadows, melting away just how he had appeared in the first place. Patrick keeps crying, curled pathetically into the fetal position around a pillow while someone he doesn't know asks him-

"What's wrong, man?" The voice is hoarse but kind and Patrick wants to hear more. "Don't cry, dude. What's up?" The owner of the voice is a lean man who stands by the cracked open door. In the sliver of light from the hallway lighting a shaft in their dark room, Patrick can make out baggy shorts and shaggy hair on a man whose face is obscured in shadows.

"Someone's trying to kill me." Patrick replies in a voice too even to reflect his emotions and words.

"Someone's trying to kill all of us. Life is a constant battle, yknow, fighting to stay alive. I think it's fun. Not everyone does, though." Patrick can feel this man's eyes on him, though he can't make out his face. But the baggy shorts and shaggy hair start to dissolve into thick, black smoke while a voice tinged with a Canadian accent continues speaking-

"If someone's trying to kill you, then someone's trying to kill me. And you're trying to die before they get you, but maybe it's easier to fight back. Maybe you want them to never take you alive, but I want to stay alive. The rest of us do. You can't be the only one to disappear..."

The voice echoes around Patrick's head and the smoke is filled with glitter and shapes and bright colors to mix with the darkness.

"...One day waking up will be worth it, when you won't be so alone, and you'll still be fighting, but you can lose a battle and win a war. Come with us. We need you..." The room flashes and pulses with the glitter, smoke, and crackly megaphone voice while the man in the corner has left and Greyson's bed has disappeared as well. Patrick's alone, wherever he is. But is he?

"Get some sleep, Patrick." It all fades to black.


	5. 666 party with the devil bitch!

JULY 

alban hills, new mexico.

Ryan's never been the kind of guy to worry about luck. Lucky sevens and dangerous thirteens don't faze him, he walks under the ladders at construction zones and pets black cats as much as any other, although he's a dog person through and through.

The idea of hitchhiking down to Albuquerque might worry the average teenager, but it's no sweat to Ryan. He packs a bag of essentials and locks the door of Charlie and Skye's shack behind him like he'll be back before curfew. They had given him a key with confidence, ten year old Hunter gets one too, since it's not often that they're home and when they are, they're all doped up. It doesn't matter anyways. Hunter can fend for himself and the addicts will survive without the money Ryan will bring in for them.

He stops at a 7-11 to buy a Snickers bar and a bottle of Coke that tells him to share it with Megan! Ryan doesn't know any Megans. He eats half his candy bar and then takes his chances on the NM-45 entrance ramp.

He walks backwards in the warm golden afternoon glow of the sun with the Coke in one hand and the other busied with his thumb stuck out to the road. He plays the license plate game to himself while maintaining his slow and steady backwards pace. His hair blows across his face in the warm, dusty wind and the passing cars carry him along down the highway. Unsurprisingly, it isn't long before a dumpy looking car pulls over ahead of Ryan. He jogs up to it and peers inside the passenger side window to see the perfect imitation of a hippie gazing up at him through rose tinted sunglasses.

"Need a ride?" She asks. Without a reply, Ryan opens the door and slides into the squishy leather interior seat. "Where are you headed?" She continues as she cruises back onto the highway, not seeking much use out of her turn signals.

"The Amtrak station in Albuquerque, if that isn't too specific." Ryan replies, giving the girl a once-over. She's wearing big blue bell bottom jeans, a pink t-shirt, and a brown corduroy jacket. Her hair is blonde brown and wild and frizzy all over. Her sunglasses are shaped like little pink ovals. She's the Ashley Tisdale of 2017.

"I can get you there." She says generously as she cruises around the lanes easily, much to the dismay of other drivers. "I'm Heather." She offers plainly. Ryan buckles his seatbelt as the bright, enchanted New Mexico sun lights up their golden eyes.

"I'm Hunter." He says, not bothering with the real names. He's a minor and he knows that Ashley Tisdale won't be wasting any of her time by ratting him out as a runaway but he won't be taking any chances. But he's not the kind of guy to worry. Ryan's lucky.

"Nice to meet you." Heather says while she offers her hand out to him. He shakes it delicately and she runs a hand back through her thick blonde hair as the car wavers back and forth over the lanes.

"Are you in school?" Ryan asks casually.

"Yeah, Santa Fe community college. Just headed down to visit the parents. I'm doing art up there. I've actually got some of my prints in the back, wanna buy one?" She offers with a smile. The sun glints in her pink sunglasses and her presence is decidedly calming on Ryan.

"Yeah, how much are they?"

"Cheapest is ten bucks."

"Sure thing." Ryan says politely. He keeps his hands in his lap with the Coke bottle in between his legs and the Snickers bar in his bag. It's an unwritten rule of hitchhiking to not eat in the car unless someone else is eating or you're invited to: same goes for drinking, smoking, or anything else that could end up stinking the shit out of their car and pissing them off. The two make small talk about the lives they pretend to lead as they drift aimlessly along the highway, sometimes too fast and other times much too slow; winding in and out of lanes while both of them ignore the speedy honks and middle fingers that come from other drivers on the road.

The air is warm but the darkening sky is the color of a bruise; yellow purple behind the rocky horizon. Heather pops her trunk in the station parking lot and Ryan looks over her artwork while thinking about the small amount of money he has and why he's wasting it on Ashley Tisdale. Admittedly, the art is cool.

She paints pictures of things that don't exist around them in classic New Mexico colors. She paints a coastal European city in oranges and reds, she does a Korean scene all in purple and green; a glacier painted blue and yellow. Ryan buys a small canvas that's ten bucks that details a bright forest of orange, purple, and blue trees. Heather is talented and humble about her work and watches Ryan tuck the canvas into his bag before the door of the Amtrak station swings shut behind him.

She wishes him luck. Even though she can tell he doesn't need it.

chicago, illinois.

Pete Wentz is eating popcorn and not expecting his doorbell to ring when Kitty shows up at his house. During the summer, Pete winds down. His moods change with the seasons and when the days get shorter in winter, so does his temper. He'll be angry, sad, and mad in the fall and completely turn numb in the winter. He has glassy eyes on Christmas. He dissociates. It's hard. Spring reroutes everything and Pete is the party guy, smiling and laughing and shouting, drunk and high and always there, all the time.

Summer takes the fun out of spring and Pete will spend his days happy enough, lazy and stoned, miserably awaiting fall. It's what comes with what the doctors call bipolar disorder and what Pete doesn't talk about. He can feel it, though. He can feel the mania in the spring and he can feel the depression in the winter when all he does is sleep. Really, Pete Wentz isn't healthy. Smoking pot in his attic and eating all summer long is calming and nice and warm until he's starving and sad and miserable, wrapped in sweaty and dirty sheets as his family unwraps Christmas presents down the hall. Like spending the night of St. Patty's day in a jail cell. Pete's a wild card.

So is Kitty.

They're similar people and Pete takes about ten minutes to wander down the stairs to let Kitty in, who is panicking profusely on his front porch. Chicago summers are humid and sticky and Kitty's usually smooth black hair is frizzy and out of control. Her face, for once, isn't caked with makeup and she looks at Pete's red, glazed eyes with her own worried expression.

"Lindsey got possessed and she's coming here, like, now." Pete raises his eyebrows with an impressed look on his face. Lindsey is a complete enigma to the world and Pete and Frank had had many back and forths about whether she even existed in the first place. Apparently, she does.

"She got possessed?" Pete asks, opening the door as an invitation for Kitty to storm inside and theatrically throw herself on his floor. His friends always say how Pete's house is like a morgue because it's always so cold. Unless it's winter time. Then they beg for the sauna-like heat of his house.

"Well, she didn't get possessed. She met this crackhead at a cemetery who got possessed and now they're dealing with this together. Were you smoking without me?" Kitty always seems to miss out when they're all smoking pot, although it doesn't exactly agree with her, and when Frank comes over with a half o- he provides the bong and Pete provides the cheetos. They don't need Kitty puking in the bathroom to ruin their vibe.

"Maybe, whatever." Pete replies, finally closing the door behind them. "What's the big deal about this... possession?"

"I made Lindsey talk to Drew, right?" Kitty starts, wandering into Pete's kitchen. She opens the pantry and digs around while she continues to talk. "And Drew thinks that her friend got possessed and someone was trying to get a prophecy out through him. Can I eat these?"

"Yeah."

"And so green smoke came out of the dude's mouth and his eyes rolled back and he spoke in this scary voice and Drew was convinced that it was a God and Lindsey thinks so too."

"I met Jesus once." Pete says lethargically. Kitty is opening a can of chickpeas and eating them with sliced pickles which is god damned relatable, but she doesn't want to hear about Pete meeting Jesus. He cuts her off when she tries to talk anyways. "It was at Warped tour. 2014."

"Mhm, so is it okay if Lindsey stays-"

"Right, so I felt sick during Atilla's set and so I went to the back and some dude came up to me, right? And he asks me what my name is and says I look familiar and then he asks if he can have a hug so I give him one, and like, it's a good hug and he says he looks like his friend 'Humanity'" (Kitty laughs at this but Pete ignores her-) "And I really, do, honestly, think it's a sign. When he left Chris Fronz was saying "666 party with the devil bitch!" and the dude really did look like Jesus."

"Cool, Pete, can Lindsey stay in your basement?"

"Yeah." Pete replies halfheartedly. He's not religious but he's felt better since Warped '14, maybe. Maybe a bit better. The way he felt stronger after he got drunk off of chugging vanilla extract. Whatever, y'know. It doesn't matter anyways. He had gone back into the pit for Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! and gotten punched so hard that he had been knocked out and had woken up with a few screws permanently loose. Maybe mosh pits cause mental illness. It's an explanation, at least. Better than what the doctors can come up with.

philadelphia, pennsylvania.

It doesn't take Lindsey long to realize that Gerard is awfully annoying. The walk to Philly isn't a long one but he whines and groans and moans about being dragged up to Chicago. The whole purpose of his journey is making it down to D.C. and this is just dragging him backwards, but Lindsey's stopped smiling when he makes jokes and they sit at the Amtrak station in a solemn silence waiting for their train to be called.

Lindsey's not excited for this twenty hour train trip. She had previously taken pictures of her mom's credit card and bought them two one way tickets to the windy city while Gerard had whined about how he wanted his to be round trip. It hadn't been a pretty picture when Lindsey whipped around and snapped at him, telling him the hard truth about how he wasn't going to kill Trump no matter how bad he wanted to and that he might as well just go back to Canada after this and that he was being an ungrateful little bitch.

The Amtrak stops in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and then Chicago. Obviously, it hits other cities, but Lindsey can take comfort in the fact that she can throw Gerard out at two other miserable stops if she has to.

"I'm hungry." Gerard says, fixing Lindsey with a desperate look. She's sick of being the caretaker and the only mature one around. It had been the same way when her parents had divorced. Mr. Ballato had been off to Austria as soon as he had gotten the chance to split. Lindsey had visited Vienna once in freshman year and spent most of the time wandering the snowy streets by herself, drinking coffee and getting lost. The most important phrase she had learned was "ein kaffee bitte." Any other questions would be answered with a nod.

But the illegal part of her father's reasoning for moving there had become more apparent as Lindsey had grown up by herself in Jersey. She did the shopping for her mom, did the oil checks for the cars, taken the dog to all his vet appointments until he died. She had tried. She's too used to doing it all for everyone else.

"Then go get some food." Lindsey mutters sharply to Gerard.

"Do you want anything?" Lindsey looks up with annoyance clear on her sharp face. "Yeah, go get me a..." Her voice trails as her eyes scan the train station. "Get me a grilled cheese."

"Oh, I'm vegan." Gerard confesses, and Lindsey can feel her teeth grinding inside her mouth with frustration.

"Gerard, go get yourself some food, okay? Get me something if you feel like it." Gerard pauses and Lindsey snaps "go!" before he finally skitters off. Lindsey turns back to her phone. Stupidly, she's input Gerard's sloppy prophecy into Google and is rewarded with transcripts of slam poems and Bible quotes. She cards a hand through her hair and sighs in frustration. She's used to knowing what's going on. And if she's not, there's always a way to find out. Although Lindsey is interested in the occult and supernatural, it wasn't as if she'd been expecting Satan to pay her a visit the night before and leave her to figure this out on her own.

It might be worth mentioning that she hates the prophecy. She hates feeling threatened. "We shall be torn apart somehow"? Doesn't sound very comforting to her.

Lindsey is comforted by what she knows. That's why she hangs around South Street, around the hipsters, homeless, and the tattoo parlors. Like how she feels in Baltimore when she gets rained on in Fells Point or walking the streets of Richmond. There's a certain way these East Coast cities can make her feel that's comforting, and Chicago won't be the same. Lindsey has been to Cleveland for the obligatory grandparent visits and walked around the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until grandpa and grandma both got sent six feet under and she could comfortably stay on the better side of the country without having to venture midwest.

Things are different over there.

Lindsey likes regionalism too, it fascinates her, and she likes mapping out places and their dialects, and finding out what's popular and, consequently, not in these places. She doesn't want to go to Chicago. She doesn't want to see her weird girlfriend. Lindsey wants to finish out her lonely years of high school and go to a community college and keep seeing spirits at nighttime and dying her hair black.

Gerard wanders back over before Lindsey can get too far into her own head and frowns when she sees what Gerard has bought.

"I got you a pretzel." He tells her, giving her a big greasy pretzel which isn't a grilled cheese but whatever, who cares, it's still food. Gerard bought himself a cheesesteak which doesn't fit with a vegan or vegetarian diet, and he starts eating it while she watches, confused.

"You said you were vegan." She starts. Gerard takes a mouthful of the sandwich and Lindsey decides that he isn't vegan.

"Oh." Gerard says after he swallows, and thinks it over. "Huh, I guess this isn't vegan. I mean, I'm in Philly and this is like, classic food right? When in Rome!" And he continues eating his sandwich, so Lindsey lets their conversation lull. She thinks that she'll miss home.

las vegas, nevada.

Brendon wakes up numb and depressed.

He's in bed with no clothes on feeling freezing cold and wondering where his girl is. He wonders, yeah, but he isn't going to look. He wraps himself tighter in his blankets because it's so fucking cold and just shakes and curls into the fetal position and focuses on being warm. He hears a high, wimpery sort of noise coming from over there (his senses of direction are a bit upside down) and ignores it until it happens again, and again, and it's someone crying and moaning like they're in pain.

Ugh.

Brendon rolls out of bed with the soft blanket half wrapped around his otherwise naked body. He's not super ripped or anything, he's poor and lives off of Cheetos and Pop-Tarts for God's sake, but he's got a good enough body and a face that radiates charisma to keep him going to bed with different girls every night and having enough confidence (or just a cocaine hangover) to be wandering around buck naked.

The girl from yesterday is laying in the bathtub in what looks like an uncomfortable position. She's not dead, not yet at least, because she's making an awful lot of noise.

"Are you okay?" Brendon asks loudly and slowly, like he's talking to his senile grandma. The girl who's name he has forgotten just moans again and Brendon is hit with this overwhelming sensation of dread and sadness that drags him down to the tiled bathroom floor. It's freezing cold but all of a sudden he's too tired to pick himself up and off of it. He hasn't done coke in a while. The comedown of the next day is always awful.

"I'm so cold!" She wails suddenly. Her hands appear on the edge of the bathtub and she drags herself over the lip of the tub just to wretch and puke straight onto Brendon, who's lying on the floor.

"Ohhh." Brendon moans, rolling the other way. The white puffed blanket around him is stained with her orange vomit and he pushes it away from him reluctantly while the girl keeps throwing up onto the previously shiny floors. There's some of her vomit on him, which honestly makes him feel a little warmer, but he's not having this. He crawls to the shower, opens the door, and turns on the tap.

Freezing water pours down on him and he screams shamelessly while his friend drapes motionless out of the bathtub with spit and puke dripping on her face. They probably look like absolute crackheads right then; one of them sitting in the shower under a hail of freezing water and the other passed out and covered in puke, both of them naked.

This is why you're told not to do drugs.

Brendon gathers the willpower to turn the handle of the shower to the hot setting and he almost cries in relief when the water starts to run warm. He stays seated as the bathroom starts to fog with humidity. Brendon looks kind of holy down there on his knees in the shower. His face is tilted up towards the water and his eyes are closed but his mouth is open as it rains down around him.

He realizes, then. He realizes that he's gotten off track and he's got some OD'd girl sitting over there and he was trying to escape the horrors of home but has just gotten himself drugged up and has turned into one of them.

They all turn out the same. You grow up with a mom on heroin and try coke once and twenty years later, you're dying for a fix. He'll let this water wash that wrong away and he'll get up when he can stand straight and he'll make sure that girl isn't dead, her name is Sammy, that's it, and then he'll get back on a train and head for the coast. That's what he'll do.


	6. Magic at the Museum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sorry for not posting for a while! finishing junior year of hs was very stressful and i went thru a very very busy time this spring. i'm sort of back to writing this now, but don't count on active updates. thank you to those that have supported this story it means a lot & helps keep me inspired to keep writing. <3

JUNE

las vegas, nevada.

Ryan loves riding the train. They go through the desert that no one ever goes through. Train tracks are the forgotten part of America that the highways can't touch. There's no glowing neon out in the desert. It's calm and dry and Ryan falls asleep easily with the train rocking him to sleep. He goes to sleep and wakes up in the same place except he's crossed state lines.

They make a stop in Flagstaff where Ryan gets off the train to stretch his legs. He isn't worried about getting back on, and isn't even worried about the fact that he doesn't have a ticket. Ryan's calm, cool, and collected. The beauty of train rides is that the conductors don't come to check your ticket until two stops in to the ride. Ryan evades them gorgeously and when a conductor does stop to talk to him, Ryan speaks clearly and earnestly when he explains that his ticket has already been checked. He's left alone for the rest of the ride.

Vegas is floating with heat. Ryan can see the city wavering in the distance and they roll in on schedule. The train station is sweltering and when he walks into the main part of it, he can't help but feel lost.

It's not a big place, the architecture of the stations on the East coast is much grander, but the atmosphere feels old and lonely. There's quiet announcements over a loudspeaker about trains back through Arizona to Louisiana, ones up to Colorado, and the one Ryan's got his eye on. The one to Los Angeles.

The next train for California leaves in an hour and Ryan settles himself on a bench with his backpack next to him. He's awfully bored and not at the leisure to act like other people when they're bored. They'll buy food or a magazine or scroll on their phones but Ryan doesn't have those options with him so he people-watches as he thinks about what he'll do when he arrives in Los Angeles.

But he doesn't think about it for too long. The future gets scary and he lives in the present and only the present. Ryan moves when he needs to move and does what he has to do and it all works out in the end so there's no sense in worrying about what could have gone better and what can go worse. He never lives vicariously and whenever he smiles, he means it.

Entirely all of his cool headed demeanor is lost when a guy around his age sits down on a bench across the terminal. He's wearing black dress pants and a white button down shirt that's probably a few too many buttons undone. He looks like he's thinking too much about something, and he's absolutely gorgeous. Ryan loses his mind immediately.

He begins to feel hot and nervous, sweaty and tingly and almost feels like someone's put a fucking spell on him. This dude is absolutely smoking hot, and Ryan decides to take him up as a travel companion. In hindsight, this would probably be a bad idea. It's better to travel with someone rather than alone but the point of it is that you know this person and you trust them to jump out of a moving car with you when hitchhiking goes wrong. Not someone you fall in love with at first sight in a train station in a city you've never been to.

Ryan grabs his bag and makes his way across the terminal.

chicago, illinois.

Lindsey comes and everything goes haywire.

She's pretty and pale and brings a hobo with her, a guy with a mean face but a friendly voice. Pete can swear he's seen this guy sleeping by the tracks on the L. They all go for their heys and hellos before Kitty decides they're making Pete's basement theirs and they all tramp down there and call up Frank to come say hey. It's a sticky sweaty party that Pete doesn't want to take part in.

Pete sits in the basement tuning into whatever goth shit music is playing in the background while Kitty, Lindsey, and Gerard gab to each other as if they'll never get the chance to speak to each other again. Pete doesn't want to talk to them. He wants to smoke some pot. He's hot and tired and slinks up the basement stairs when London After Midnight starts playing. His own god damned basement and the three of them have managed to evict him just by setting up an unpleasant scene.

Pete sits on his front porch and thinks about smackheads, tic tacs, his bass, and other things that float around his head. He thinks that he should start taking melatonin again. It always knocked him right out.

The suburbs are sweat hot and alive with the chirping of crickets. Everything is green and alive like a god damned jungle. Pete gets scared walking by these bushes because they buzz with bees and move like they're regular animals. The dark streets get so hot under the sun during the day that they become gummy and rub off on your shoes.

Now, it's dusky as the orange sun hovers behind Pete's house. He sits in the shade of his porch and watches his shoes until he hears the jingling of chains and looks up to see Frank sauntering down the street.

Frank is hot. It's a fact that's undeniable. Pete was into him when they first met.

It had been in March at a Safeway. Pete had been drunk off his ass and laughing at the pictures of dogs on the dog food cans. Him and Kitty had been at some wild party. When cops bust parties, you never really see them. Unless you do. But in this situation, there had been all the whispers, the running kids, the locked doors, opened windows, and the laughter of the kids who were on their way out but feeling reckless enough to watch the red white and blue flash flash flash outside.

Kitty and Pete had been jumping on the trampoline with way too many kids on it and when the cops had pulled up, none of them had noticed until it had been too late. Some kid had thrown himself through the netting and the whole thing had fallen over onto the grass. Grass stained and buzzed off their minds, Kitty and Pete had jogged down the street under the orange street lamps and had eventually decided to hit up a grocery store for something to do.

Admittedly, it was one of their favorite things to do. So Safeway's neon lights had lead them down the path of salvation and as they had been doing drunken staring at different brands of orange juice, Kitty had looked over and seen the guy she was trying to write music with.

"Frank!" Frank Iero, punk and handsome as ever, had walked towards them the same way he always walked. Shoulders back, hips low, chin up. Looking like an absolute asshole but drunk Pete's jaw had dropped and they had ended up in his basement, drinking orange juice and fucking around with Pete's expensive instruments. At some point, Pete had stuttered out that he played bass and Frank knew about Kitty's drums so there they were, jamming messily, laughing out loud.

It had been a good start to a friendship. Frank came over more often and they formed the band, meshing solidly together and writing demos that they all loved. Except Pete loved more than the music. He had heart eyes for Frank, who let him down hard a week before they played their first show. Since that messy conversation, they've had an odd relationship. Pete feels like Frank favors Kitty over him and lapses alone in his sadness and jealousy, but sometimes Frank favorites him.

Like tonight.

Frank sits his studded ass down on the porch step next to Pete and gives him a sideways smile. He's chewing his lips and is probably on uppers but Pete doesn't mention it. Frank is an adult and has a different set of problems to worry about. Let him chew his lip.

"What's going on inside?" Frank asks Pete. For a second, Pete thought he was asking about what was happening inside of his head and wouldn't Frank like to know.

"Oh, inside the house?" Pete refers to it like it isn't his house. At this point, Kitty owns it anyways.

"Yeah, where else?" Pete shrugs and watches as Frank shakes a cigarette out of a pack. He offers them to Pete who shakes his head. His mission used to be to get Frank to quit but both of them realized that anyone's efforts would be in vain.

"Kitty's got her weirdo magic guy and Lindsey down there. They're all too loud." Frank doesn't reply to that. He's sat on Pete's right so as not to blow smoke in his face, but neither of them have realized that. It's just a habit. The pair of them sit and talk awhile but it's not long before the party trio move from the basement to the porch. The three of them stomp out and Kitty bums a cigarette from Frank just to impress Lindsey.

The weird hobo magician introduces himself to Frank. They shake hands and make eye contact. Pete feels sick. Everyone's connected to someone except for him. Kitty wants to take Gerard (the hobo) and Lindsey downtown because they're Chicago newcomers. Pete doesn't want to come but does anyways because he'd rather walk around bored than sit by himself at home.

Frank and Gerard buy them all beers from 7-11, enough for the underage kids to get buzzed when the sun sets. They wander around in the dark clublife part of the city and all file in to a sketchy looking club. Lindsey, Pete, and Kitty have to blend in and keep their faces straight and their eyes low since they're all seventeen. It's all taken care of; a sticky summer night where the bouncers don't care whose going in and out. They've got older people with them anyways.

The club is crowded and bouncy with drugged, drunk people. Pete sticks to Frank who drags them to some crowd in the corner.

Lights flash orange and purple around Pete's head and he watches Frank pull his sweaty hair back from his face and talk to a scruffy guy with liberty spikes in his hair. Pete watches through strained eyes as Frank and Lady Liberty converse back and forth before Liberty pulls out a translucent orange pill bottle and taps a few pills into Frank's waiting hand. Frank says something, curls his hand into a fist to protect the pills, and dances his way back over to Pete. Pete isn't dancing. In fact, he's standing still amongst all the moving bodies. He already feels like he's in a different world and stares numbly at Frank, who holds out an open palm with two round little pills in it. Pete can't hear a thing he's saying so just swallows the little thing dry.

Placebo kicks in almost right away and ten minutes later, Pete's seeing stars and dancing. The rest of the night goes like that: he feels hot and cold and on and off over and over as he dances around the club with Frank, forgetting about himself and everyone else. The walls melt in like oil stains sometimes and faces dent and swirl. It's not that Pete isn't enjoying himself. He is, really. He's high out of his goddamned mind and is sharing the experience with not so much as an ex-lover but more of someone who's let him down.

They can still dance, though.

Pete bobs his head up and down and rocks up onto his tiptoes and dances around like that, crashing around and bumping into people and laughing into Frank and there are bright lights and cool ones and he feels hot and sweaty and friction, that's what he is. He feels like a walking friction.

"I feel like I'm made out of friction!" He laughs into Frank's ear, holding onto his lover by the shoulder.

"Yo!" Frank responds eloquently. He tilts his head back and the lights turn blue and pink and light up his face in a fantastic display of beauty. The pink catches his lip ring but the rest of his face is washed in blue. Pete would kiss him if not for the fact that he's not supposed to.

They dance until Pete's legs hurt and Frank wants a smoke. They end up smoking a joint outside with strangers and following them to a hardcore show that's taking place in someone's basement.

The band is godawful but everyone screams and shoves each other around until they finish playing. Pete and Frank make acquaintances and spread their name, M.A.D, like mutual assured destruction, yeah, and leave at three in the morning when they get a noise complaint.

Whatever they had been on wears off by then. It had maybe been dexies mixed with a little something extra , but Pete doesn't mind though. He trusts Frank not to lace his shit and they have fun together and it's all good.

When they get back to Pete's house, neither of them are surprised to find Kitty, Lindsey, and Gerard back in the basement like usual. The three of them are high off their heads and watching Beetlejuice with the volume so high that it makes Pete's head whirl. He crashes on his own couch on top of Kitty and laughs with them into the night, just like that.

It doesn't matter who disappears and then reappears. Things are trippy but that's fine and that's the way Pete likes them. He thinks he's happy when he's cuddled up on the couch while high with all these strangers. He likes spending nights out and forgetting things the next morning. He likes becoming anything and everything. He likes transcending.

washington, d.c.

Gerard wakes up somewhere else.

He doesn't know where he fell asleep so he's wondering why it feels so foreign waking up. Maybe the issue is the fact that he's on a bed. Gerard doesn't sleep on beds much. He loves sleeping. He can drift off anywhere, curl himself into a little ball and just... sleep. The way it's supposed to be. Gerard loves the idea of his body existing on some shitty street while his mind drifts up up and away, not caring about the world left below. It's freeing and fantastic.

What isn't fantastic is the fact that he's woken up in a bed.

He rolls over and opens his eyes to see a very pleasant surprise. A shirtless guy is lying in bed next to him. Gerard decides not to complain and closes his eyes again, smushing his face into the pillow and sighing loudly with comfortable content as he dozes again. The two of them move like that for two more hours, tossing and turning, drooling on pillows, curling up their legs like normal people do. The sunlight in their room becomes apparent after a while, and Gerard pulls a pillow over his face and hears the guy next to him start to wake up, for real.

His breathing speeds up and Gerard can feel him move off the bed and sit up. The bed gives when his weight leaves it and Gerard his feet on the carpeted floor. Then-

"What the fuck?!" Gerard takes the pillow off his eyes. The sunlight is almost blinding and he curls back into himself but squints over at the guy, Frank, that's his name, who's standing in his boxers by the window. "Where are we?" Frank demands, leaving Gerard wondering the same thing. Honestly, he had thought they were in Chicago.

"Chicago?" He offers weakly, glancing at the window. He can't see out of it from the bed, but gets the feeling that Frank isn't seeing the Sears Tower.

"Come here." Frank says weakly. Gerard sits up and smiles warmly when he sees the tattoos on Frank's legs. He really likes leg tattoos. "Yo, stop it. Get over here." Frank moves away from the window to find some pants while Gerard wanders over to check out the view. He's struck with a very, very good feeling about all of this.

"We're in Washington fucking D.C., baby!" He squeals excitedly. "Fuck, this is awesome! I was headed here in the first place! Wow, this is sweet!" Gerard continues, turning around to see Frank looking awfully pale and unhappy. "What's wrong? This is so awesome! Let's go sightseeing!"

"How did we get here?" Frank asks. Honestly, it's a good question. Gerard doesn't like bothering himself with little things like that, and would rather just not think about that and instead put his plan into action, you know, the one about killing Trump, but instead he's stuck with a hot guy with tattooed legs. The issue is, the hot guy wants to bother himself with the little things.

"Does it matter?" Gerard asks slowly. Frank sits down heavily on the bed with a look of foggy realisation on his face that doesn't look very good. 

"I remember." Frank says quietly, and that's it. Gerard really can't be bothered with all this cryptic bullshit- there's a few main methods of transportation like: car, train, bus, on foot- "Shadow travel." Frank sighs under his breath and Gerard starts, surprised.

"What did you just say?" He demands, trying to pretend like he's not getting goosebumps. Frank looks up with curious, serious eyes. Gerard bites his lip.

"You know what I'm talking about?" Frank asks quietly, and Gerard nods. He sits down on the bed next to Frank and the two do everything but look at each other. Both of them are thinking the same thing but don't know how to get the words out. Gerard's easy confidence has fallen apart and he knows what comes with saying it out loud. Frank has balls and clears his throat before asking- "You're..."

"Mixed?" Gerard offers behind a laugh and Frank nods while carding a hand back through his hair.

"This is so weird, this is so weird." Frank mutters, looking down at his fingers. "What are the odds?" Gerard shrugs and tries to let it go again, he just wants to check out D.C.'s free museums, but he has to admit that this is kind of weird. He's never randomly come across another demigod. "Who's your parent?" Frank asks.

"The dream guy." Gerard says casually, knowing that they're not supposed to go throwing names around randomly. Frank nods and then gets up, paces around, and looks back at Gerard who sits helplessly on the foot of the bed.

"Wait, Pete says you came up with Lindsey because of some magic...?" Gerard's heart sinks.

"I kind of, uh, got a prophecy." Frank's eyes widen and his mouth drops a little bit. He's got a hot, porn mouth, especially with that lip ring. Gerard's about to get plenty of lip, though.

"You got a fucking prophecy? And you didn't tell anyone!?" Frank shouts, gesturing wildly.

"I didn't think it was that big of a deal-"

"God, Gerard, this shit is serious!" Gerard is now realizing that. "Fuck!" Frank goes back to pacing while Gerard sits there and feels guilty and sort of bad for himself. "Do you know about the drama happening down there?" The look on Gerard's face is enough of an answer and Frank starts talking. Gerard starts listening.

hampton, georgia.

Patrick's been dreaming in color lately.

He's been doing things differently lately and it's not like he can objectively look at himself and think about it, but life has changed. He feels awfully fine to spend the day in bed, which hadn't been the case before. Before, bugs would crawl all over the ceiling and choke his throat whenever he sat still too long so he would keep moving and keep bleeding but now, he speaks to people in his sleep.

It's calm there.

He doesn't have Greyson snarling at him and doesn't have everyone judging him. Patrick's lost his tongue in real life and keeps his head down and watches his hands shake far, far away while everyone else judges him. He can speak in his dreams.

The man in his dreams has black hair and wears a brown corduroy jacket. He smiles with all his teeth and him and Patrick walk around together all night long. Sometimes the man will buy them something to eat, and sometimes the man will smoke cigarettes. Patrick tries it when he feels like it and watches the smokey grey haze twist around them. Tonight, the man tries to teach Patrick how to blow smoke rings.

"You have to put your lips like this." He says, taking a deep drag on his cigarette and pursing his lips in a ridiculous pose. Then he puffs out three neat rings that disappear into the heavy night air around them. Patrick tries it but his smoke just comes out messy, and he gives up. Whenever he smokes in his dreams, his chest feels light and he feels calm.

"I don't like it here." Patrick tells the man, who looks at him with those calm, smart hazel eyes.

"I know." He replies. They're sitting on a wall behind a Rite Aid in some other world and Patrick kicks his legs against the wall. Clear headed and bright eyed- he always feels like a perfect person in his dreams and breathes deeply because he finally has the chance.

"I can break you out of there, if you want." The man offers simply, like Patrick should have already known. "I think I might have to." He adds offhandedly. Patrick looks up at him with an admiring and questioning expression.

"Really?" The man looks back down at Patrick with the warm face that makes Patrick feel like he belongs. His answer is just a nod, and he goes back to smoking and moving his body like he's listening to some song playing inside his head.


End file.
